Boeroer

My first thought is that those are rel. late game items (from lvl 15 on of you're rather good at this game). It's hard to plan a whole build around lateish game stuff. Eh I mean not hard to theorycraft it but to actually play it: you will play with suboptimal gear for a very long time and then, when you get it, there's maybe not that much of the game left. Second thought: With the other two DLCs following it maybe ok though. The gear is based on afflictions: applying and receiving them. So your first ideas should go into that direction.

You behave as if this was set in stone. I just said it because Josh reported that Turn Based Mode of Deadfire was very well received and that games like D:OS I and II also were successful because of Turn Based Combat. "It sounded like" isn't the same as "it will be". I know that a lot of people (hello SonicMage) like to communicate their impressions and opinions that way but I'm not one of them. It just sounded like it - to me. And to be honest Turn Based Combat nearly only has advantages over RTwP if you do it right. I like RTwP but it can be (visually) messy, hard to balance, harder to code. If it's too fast players get overwhelmed, if it's too slow it feels like combatants act underwater. And the perception of that is very individual. And if you ever played Pen & Paper RPGs you should be familiar with the general idea of Turn Based combat because RT is impossible there (unless you are LARPing it out somehow or so...). I don't know if anybody of you played Battle Brothers. But it's an example of a very efficient yet simple turn based system which leads to great tactical combat that can be very exciting and addictive. Even without magic, healing and very little AoE. You could take that ruleset and put it into a P&P version 1:1. I would love to see a Pillars game with somewhat similar mechanics. The turn based ruleset of the tabletop version of PoE and also the classless system look nice. Josh and his group also seem to have fun with it while they playtest and tweak it along the way. Maybe we will see an adaption for a CRPG at some point.

Since you have a reach weapon (pikes or quarterstaff - in this case quarterstaff) you don't need to put too much effort into making your Cipher sturdy. Just stay behind your front line. You can get 4 party members very quickly (and then get an adventurer from an inn if you feel like it - usually it's good to make one who's great at mechanics - often a rogue). Because if that your stat spread could be more "min-maxed" as if you wanted to stay in the front row. Later on, once you have a lot of hard CC options, your survivability doesn't matter that much anyway: not much can hurt you while it lies on the ground. But you still want to play somebody with good dialogue options I guess. And your stats should also fit a former Orlan slave who are known for their relentlessness - but also that they are not very strong. Maybe he even got sick as a slave and was dumped so where to die before he fled? The Dyrwood is a safe haven for slaves since slavery is forbidden there. So I would suggest a rel. balanced stat approach. With armor and items you can then go all offensive (light to no armor and so on). MIG: 12 CON: 6 DEX: 15 PER: 15 INT: 15 RES: 15 On a really min-maxed second row cipher you would dump CON and RES entirely and rely on you front line and heavy CC. But RES is a strong dialogue stat in PoE, so... also fits Orlans better to have it high(ish). Stats are not that important in the game anyway. At least not if we talk about a few points here and there. You don't need exorbitant MIG as two handed Cipher since you can get dmg bonuses from Two-Handed Style, Soul Whip/Biting Whip and Apprentice's Sneak Attack as well as lots of crits from attacking hard-cc'd enemies (like hitting a dude you just cast Mental Binding on). There are also melee Ciphers in the build list here I guess?

I mean he's as laid back as you can be with Llawran's Stick up your derrière.

So... your Priest did resurrect this thread then?

There are no fights you have to do solo. Paladins usually favor a stat- and skill spread that is good for a talkative character --> more dialogue options. Orlan Paladin is a bit unusual, but Orlans often get enslaved, so that fits. Ciphers are a lot more common among Orlans than with other races. Also a Cipher with good dialogue options is not hard to build. So maybe Orlan Cipher (melee) may be the way to go. A good weapon to a) stay close to the slave role and b) do good dmg (and thus generate good focus) is to grab Durance's Staff asap (it has a burning lash which is very useful that early in the game) and has two dmaage types (crush/burn). Later, in the first few levels of the Endless Paths, get Llawran's Stick. It has the speed enchantment which is one of the best for dps and focus gain. Enchant it with a lash (best something else than burn because you will keep Durance's Staff as backup - shock is good). Use Llawran's Stick primarrly and from the second row. Skill offensively. Pick Time Parasite. With Time Parasite, Llawran's Stick and some Durgan Steel you will attack with 0 recovery which is very, very fast. One of the best powers of Ciphers is all mind controls (Whisper of Treason etc.) and Amplified Wave.

I don't think they drop the Pillars IP. It might not be a PoE3 with Real Time with Pause though. If you listened to Josh Sawyers Deadfire Post Mortem talk: it sounded like they want to learn from the mistakes they made with Deadfire (I think they identified the biggest problems with it correctly). And to profit from that insights they would need to make another Pillars game - I hope. It also sounded as if Turn Based is the way to go.

He can get back Bond if he becomes brilliant. E.g. a Cipher can cast Ancestor's Memory on him. Or you build a Tactician/Ranger and become brilliant by flanking all enemies (e.g. with Whispers otEP + Mule Kick). There's also a cape which has a 1% chance to trigger brilliant every time you take a hit. Or a Chanter uses "His Heart Did Fill With the Light of the Dawn".

Summon duration can't be prolonged with anything else but INT and Power Level. Fire Stag lasts not terribly long (has a very high staring PL so no big PL bonus to duration) - but longer than Barring Death's Door + 2 times Salvation of Time. So in this case it's fine. You can speed up the Stag with a DEX Inspiration. That way you can get 1 (maybe 2) more explosions out of it. Still not gamebreaking, but fun somehow. You can simply shift+click on the ability and the stag will try to explode as often as it can without you babysitting. You might be able to use this tactic to bomb some encounters from a safe distance that are otherwise a bit risky. Nop idea - I just found out accidentially today and thought it's fun enough to share.

Hey! I found a way to make Fire Stag somewhat useful: Fire Stag has an unlimited use of self-destruct which does good burn/pierce damage in a fixed (friendly fire) AoE. Unfortunately it kills itself with the self-destruct (obviously). So the limitless uses are of little... use. But if you cast Lay on Hands (Shieldbearer) or Barring Death's Door (Priest) on the Stag it will not get killed in the process, allowing it to repeat the self-destruction over and over again as long as the barring effect lasts. This can be prolonged with Salvation of Time. All those spells can be cast on the Stag because it's a "steerable" summon which is not on autopilot and thus counts as "ally".

Eh? His is either exaggerated or you do something very wrong. With the right apporach you won't have many problems with stronghold raids at all. Every attack gets telegraphed long before so that you have the time to travel back and do the encounter yourself. Nearly all of them are extremely easy. If you kill all enemies you won't have any damage to your stronghold and get experience. If you always let your stronghold sort the attacks out on its own there will be damage. I guess you never travelled to your stronghold to aid in those fights? To keep the amount of raids in check: raise your security number. Once you get hirelings for your stronghold (via barracks) and some security upgrades (focus on those ones first) you won't experience many attacks anymore. Up to the point where they don't happen at all. Also you don't want to raise your prestige too soon. I can't remember if that attracks raiders - but the higher the prestige the more advanced the stronghold adventures become. If you level your prestige too fast you will skip a lot of the low level stronghold adventures which could bring you nice unique items. Best thing is to hire folks who have high positive security gain but a negative impact on your prestige (best example Korgrak the Ogre from Dyrford Crossing). TL;dr: do the fights yourself, favor the structures with the highest security gain, build barracks and enlist mercenaries with the highest security gain asap.

The difference is that a Tactician can become brilliant at lvl1 while a Cipher has to level a lot before he can even think about casting Ancestor's Memory (which is also expensive, so you need yo collect some focus first). My Tactician/Barb would always bring Whispers of the Endless Paths with him. Not only is WotEP + Clear Out pretty bonkers in general, but Mule Kick in an AoE gets you back a multiple points of discipline (if you interrupt several enemies with one strike) but also flanks (via disoriented) several enemies so it's rel. easy to become brilliant even without a fellow Cipher or Wizard. Morning Star is one of the best weapon choices for a Brute. Since it can lower fortitude by 25 points and lots of the attack abilites of a brute target fortitude (Knockdown/Mule Kick, Clear Out e.g.) also see Brute Force. If you don't like to switch weapons around a lot then Devoted/Barb with Morningstar is indeed a good choice. Also because of solid base PEN (then even better with Devoted, may even get pushed further with a Berserker) and dual damage type. My preferred method to remove Berserker's confusion is Devil of Caroc's Breastplate. It's a great piece of armor per se. But you can also simply eat a luminous lobster or similar food while resting which would make you immune until you rest again. Or use some Svef.

Certain bashing shields - e.g. Magran's Blessing - don't necessarily need an upgrade for dmg and PEN and ACC - if it has other upgrades that make its use worthwhile. In this case the -3 benefical effect debuff. It kind of makes sense that if you reinforce a medium heater shield with "quality" that it doesn't automatically becomes a better bashing weapon. So... providing fitting and benefical enchantments (or buffing the existing ones) for each bashing shield could make them worthwhile without doing a rel. "boring" blanket-buff for all of them. Afaik there are only 3 bashing shields anyway, right? And Tuotilo's Plam seems to be fine while Magran's Blessing is maybe more a "utility bashing" than dps bashing. That leaves Best Defense: needs better PEN enchantment - or additional PEN enchantment that comes after the first one. needs WAY better dmg boost - or additional dmg (maybe even a lash) enchantment that comes after the first one

That would also work.

Right. You have to take those things into account as well. By the way: Lance of the Midwood Stag can be used by Ciphers as well. The enchantment that gives you Woodskin (conditionally) also unlocks the +2 PL boost (which is universal). Of course it's better to have a party member who puts a fitting effect on your Cipher (since that's more reliable).

I find it a bit sad that the priest class generally is decided into "bland" (bland from a lore point of view) subclasses that are dedicated to a whole god - while the gods have so many different aspects. Look at Ondra<-->Ngati. Another class concept would have been to introduce different priestly "persuasions", like orders or churches. Which may interpret one god's aspects differently even if they worship the same god in the end. Like it is with Xoti (Gaun). Like Catholics and Protestants pray to the same god, but have different "official" lithurgies, beliefs and also different dispositions (if you'd press them into a Pillars mechanic). The motivations, beliefs and disposition of a priest of Gaun might be different from that of a Ardyrian priest of Eothas and a Vaillian priest of Eothas (insert unique curch names). I think this was a missed opportunity for more "in-depth" lore and worldbuilding. Now every Priest of a certain God has to follow that exact same principles/dispositions. While with Paladins and Monks you can always add new interesting orders and cults. You can do that with Priests as well, but now it might feel a bit grafted (if you can say that). Like Xoti feels a bit out of place since her class doesn't fit the "order" of normal Priest classes. Imagine a church of Galawain that focuses on the "pursuit" aspect of Galawain called "Seekers". Stuff like that.

Griffin's Blade gives your spells additive 10% dmg. Lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses. They are calculated based on the complete "primary" dmg you dealt (so to speak). That means that Blightheart will add a 10% multiplicative dmg bonus to your spells, but it has to overcome the target's corrode AR separately. +1 Power Level adds 5% base damage to offensive abilities (besides the other stuff like PEN and ACC). And that is multiplicative dmg increase as well, but without having to overcome another AR value separately. For spells this often doesn't make a lot of difference since you can't really mix a lot of additive dmg bonuses with multiplicative ones as you can with weapon attacks. Usually it's only the base dmg of the spell, then the additive bonus of MIG and then you can multiply that with either Blightheart's 10% lash or/and Power Level. If you have a ton of MIG (e.g. being a Helwalker) that can make a difference though. Imagine a spell with 100 base damage. You have 30 MIG (+60% additive dmg). That means the spell would do 100 + 60 dmg. With Griffin's Blade you would simply add 10 dmg. Resulting in 170 "primary" dmg. With Blightheart you would take the 160 "primary" dmg and multiply it by 10%. You'll end up with 160 primary and 16 corrosive lash. Still not the world, but you get the point. If you score a crit it's even better since you'll add 25% more additive dmg. Same with Overpenetration (which mostly occurs in crits). At that point the lash really pays off compared to yet another flat additive bonus. Same goes for Power Level bonuses. So if you can get a 10% lash (or a +2 PL increase) compared to an additive 10% increase: always take the lash or the Power Levels. Same when you compare stuff like Biting Whip (10% additive) to Eternal Devotion (10% lash). With weapons + abilities it's more interesting because you usually get a lot more additive modifiers which can then be multiplied by PL and/or lash. This includes weapon quality (fine to legendary or even mythic - or post-mythic with Monk fists), MIG, certain enchantments and stuff like Sneak Attack and whatnot. Tl;dr: Blightheart and Cromoprismatic Staff are better than Griffin's Blade (if we look at spell dmg improvement).

You mean Hitchphallus?

Glawain is actually called "the Clever Hound" (because of his aspects "pursuit" and "discovery"), so...

By the way: as single class Wizard you can still keep the one handed Great Sword from Citzal's Enchanted Armoury. I don't know if it then is not breaking (see Abydon's Challenge), but you can easily make two of those and dual wield them or simply wear a shield and still do two-hander damage. What you do: cast Citzal's Enchanted Armory, then cast Concelhaut's Draining Touch (will replace the Great Sword in your main hand, you will have one handed Morning Star + Draining Touch). Armory can wear off before the fight ends. Fight then ends and Draining Touch vanishes, but you'll get the Great Sword. My starting setup was fist + blunderbuss (offhand) - don't know if that's important. Just did this accidentially while testing stuff. Thought this was fixed but it is not. 100% reproducable for me. Unfortunately the old trick with Armory + Form of the Fearsome Brute (keeping the Breastplate with 11 AR but 0 recovery) no longer works. Maybe that's worth something - don't know.

They simply removed the scaling with Transcended Suffering/MUT from Woedica's fists and kept the quality scaling. Since Tuotilo's Palm seems to be a Monk themed shield it would be fair to just leave it as it is I guess.

Idon't know if it's easy to scale the offensive capabilities of bashing with quality. I guess it would be no mechanical problem though.

Given how late you get that shield an increase of 25% additive dmg for such low base damage (7-10) as an enchantment that requires serious investment is a slap in the face in my opinion.

Diplomacy and brutal honesty don't work well together. I know from professional experience...