Boeroer

The only spell that I miss when not making him SC Priest ist Call of Rymrgand I think. That one is very nice. I only made him a Rogue/Priest because I already had a SC Priest Xoti in the party at that time - but I was impressed and surprised by the damage he put out with his spiritual axes (+ Deep Wound + Bleeding Cuts). Those are actually very good weapons that work especially well with a Rogue. But it also means lenghty buffing and summoning etc. first.

Eh sorry, I meant char level 20 (that's PL 9). And yes, that would be single class. I had FoD on a single Paladin in mind but then carried on with the Assassin/Paladin then. Sorry. I edited that passage.

You mean my stealth suggestion.

There are not many lashes on spells. Blighthearts' lash is an exception (and thus that's a good weapon for a damage dealing caster). Most lashes only work with weapon attacks, some even only in melee (Turning Wheel for example). Crippling Strike and Barbaric Blow have no lashes. They simply have additive bonuses that are based on the weapon's base damage. Lashes are usually damage attachments like "+20% damage as burn" or "+10% damage as crush" - so basically when it's a different damage type than the one your weapon actually has. Examples: Firebrand, Spiritual Weapons of Priests (Vatnir as Priest/Rogue with dual Spiritual Battle axes and Bleeding Cuts does actually pretty high melee dmg), Dragon's Dowry, Modwyr, Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff and many more. Effort has a wounding DoT lash but it doesn't stack with itself which is kind of bad (not like Tidefall in PoE). Examples for abilites with lashes: Flames of Devotion, Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Wildstrike... Rogues, Barbs and Fighters have no ability that adds a lash to an attack (excapt Rogues have Deep Wounds which works like a DoT lash). Ciphers also don't. Rangers only if you count Wounding Shot. Casters in general don't have weapon lash abilites except Druids with Boar form (wounding damage while shifted) and Firebrand and Priests with spiritual weapons - but I counted that as weapons above. Everybody has access to multiplicative dmg bonuses for their abilites through Power Level though.

As I said: it would be a simple "fix" for Deadfire. Not an approach for the superduper battlefield simulation you might have in mind. Giving dagger/stiletto/club an additional wounding property (or wahtever fitting bonus - doesn't matter at this stage of theorycrafting) ONLY for abilities that somehat imply that the enemy doesn't see you coming (Sneak Attack, stealth attacks, Backstab...) would somewhat resemble to better advance with a weapon without drawing attention. And if you can advance without raising suspicion you will most likely be able to land a more precise hit which will be bleeding (aka wounding in Deadfire). Besides that reasoning: it was just a random example for some bonus you could give daggers when they are used with "stealth" and "hey look: I'm not really attacking you, am I?" stuff in mind - as I explicitly said. It's obvious that getting cleaved in half by a great sword is often more harmful than getting stabbed in the back. But that was not the point. I thought that was fairly obvious. If not you'll have to blame my poor English skills I guess... For your nice combat simulation approach I gave some other examples (with reach maluses on weapons and places with confined spaces on maps etc.) that might be suited to make combat with different weapons which are suited for different situations in an RPG more realistic.

Indeed. Flames of Devotion adds a burning lash to the attack. In case of Bleak Walkers it's even to lashes (one bigger burn and one smaller corrode + sicken). If you can add a chanter to the party with Mith Fyr (burnung lash) you can drive that even higher. Flames of Devotion is also nice because it's PL 1. Which means it gets a 5% multiplicative base dmg bonus with every additional (burn and universal) power level. So for example Magran's Favor will give you +10% multiplicative dmg with Flames of Devotion. Without any lash. Use it one handed to ensure assassination crits and activate Bleeding Cuts to deliver a devastating DoT on top of all the dmg. Takes some time to apply all the raw dmg though. At Power Level character level 20 (PL 9), Prestige and Magran's Favor you would have 12 burn power levels. FoD is PL 1. So 12 - 1 = 11 bonus PLs for FoD. That means an 55% multiplicative dmg increase - only for a single class paladin though. A multiclass Paladin/Assassin would be able to reach PL 7 + 2 = 9. That's a 40% multiplicative dmg increase for FoD then through power level scaling. That PLUS the multiplicative lashes and all the dmg bonuses of the Assassin which get multiplied by both. AND you can also wear the Ring of Focused Flames for +10 ACC since it works with FoD as well. Magran's Favor is nice because of PL bonus, but it also hasn't very high base damage. So often an arquebus is better when it's about high per-hit dmg. Dragon's Dowry also has a big lash on it - so this leads to reliable high dmg per hit numbers. That's why I think a Bleak Walker/Assassin + Dragon's Dowry might be able to deliver the highest and rel. reliable Assassination strike (besides spells + Assassination). Maybe there's something else that works equally well but I can't see it atm. Bleak Walker/Ranger with Takedown Combo comes pretty close - although then it's not an official Assassin anymore. Also guns are best for assassination (when using weapons) since you can always skip the reload and do something else immediately (like using Escape or Shadowing Beyond) instead of having to wait for recovery to finish.

Then One Handed Style without using an offhand weapon would be inferior. So you would need to give a lower One Handed Style bonus - and things become more complicated. My "simple" approach for Deadfire would be to give dagger, stiletto and club bonuses of some sorts (e.g. wounding dmg or a bigger additive modifier or whatever) in situations where it makes sense. Which translates to giving them those bonuses with certain abilities: mainly attacks from stealth/invisibility, higher Sneak Attack bonus, higher crit chance with Minor Threat, better Assassinate and Backstab. Something like that. Maybe a single simple bonus in certain situations would be better to keep things simple. Maybe there are other abilities of other classes that make sense to get the bonus when being very near to the target. Don't know. Or just keep it as it is. It's a fantasy game after all. It's ok if weapons are balanced if you don't have special "situations" in your game (in combat) to take into account the "real" properties of those weapons.

Of course reach is an immense advantage on the battlefield (as long as you can keep the enemy at that reach). But you would have to design a game around that reach factor - and also around the awareness of the opponent. Then you could give daggers and such advantages in certain situations (e.g. in a tavern brawl, in cavern fights, when you want to hide the weapon, when you sneak etc.) while exposing their disadvantages in other situations (open battlefield, duels...). You could start with giving weapon certain maluses/bonuses for reach categories and then define maps/surroundings that have certain limits in terms of how well you can use a long reach weapon. Let's say you are in a dungeon where's not much space. You could give the map or certain areas in it a value that represents how well you can fight in it with certain weapons. Example: You invent reach categories A, B, C, D and give weapons a value for each. Dagger would be A: 0, B -5,  C -10, D -20. Sword: A: -5, B: 0, C -5, D -10. Pike: A: -20, B: -10, C -5, D 0. And so on. Just quick examples. There could be weapons that work equally well in different categories. Maybe even with special abilities like Half-Sword etc. Thenan area like a dungeon could give you possible categories like A, B. Open field would be A,B,C,D. A map where you have to strike over a narrow chasm or through bars might only give you C and D. You name it. Then you could give maluses to "stealth" or "making a totally peaceful impression while approaching" checks while wearing certain weapons. Let's call it "conceal". And so on. You could to a lot to make combat more interesting while keeping it a bit more "realistic" while also encourage the adventurer to use/carry more than one single weapon. So a spear user would most likely carry a dagger for the times he crawls down that burrow. Obviously you have to plan this right from the start. And it's not that easy to communicate to a new player. PoE didn't go that route - so in order to prevent frustration for rogueish dagger lovers it has to balance all weapons. Daggers doing low base dmg but striking faster makes sense then. If you now take away the speed advantage - that doesn't make sense.

Stacking some mediocre additive dmg bonuses (Devoted) with a lot higher additive dmg bonuses (Assassin) will not result in jawdropping dmg numbers (per hit). Except maybe if you'd use an Assassin/Ranger who uses Assassination + Backstab + Takedown combo with an arquebus (very tedious setup though). You need to combine the high additive dmg bonuses the Assassin gets with a multiplicative one. That's abilities with very high PL bonus (meaning low level abilities), lashes and DoTs (wounding, Bleeding Cuts, Deep Wounds etc.). So, stuff like Bleak Walker + Assassin + high base dmg lash weapon (Dragon's Dowry, Cromoprismatic etc.) or wounding weapon (Oathbreaker's + Bleeding Cuts) works better than Devoted + Assassin. Simply because the lashes/the DoTs will take the already high dmg roll and multiply everything. While a Devoted will add some whimpy Weapon Spec and Mastery and a bit more crit dmg which is all just some little chunks of weapon base damage. Example: A) Weapon base dmg of 20, +250% base dmg modifier vs. B) dmg of 20, +200% base dmg mod and a +30% lash: A) 20 * (1+2.5) = 70 B) 20 * (1+2) * 1.3 = 78 Although B's lash is "only" 30% vs. A's 50% additive bonus the overall dmg is still higher. So, tl;dr: combine additive dmg bonuses with multiplicative ones - it's more effective than stacking lots of additive ones. Besides that: Devoted is good because he adds PEN. Much more important than his increased crit dmg. But an Assassin already has very high PEN with Assassination. So this doesn't complement very well except against the highest of AR values.

I haven't played Deadfire for some months as well. I mean besides firing it up to test some stuff every now and then. Can't say if that's purely because of the TB-induced bugs to RTwP or just because I got bored in general. But surely the TB messup didn't help. I am indifferent to the "TB vs. RTwP" topic. I like both. For example I liked the TB game "Blackguards" (but don't like D:OS I and II). And of course I like PoE and Deadfire. So - the combat mode itself is not something that drives me off or attracts me. But somehow I don't want to play Deadfire in TB again. I feel an objection to learn anew the mechanics of a game whose RTwP mechanics I already studied in depth and length. Maybe I'm alone with that, no idea. So, for me TB mode only brought disadvantages. Still - I can understand why that mode was introduced. There are players that stick to one certain system. They like TB and loathe RTwP and vice versa. They use those systems as indicators whether they will like a game or not. Those people won't buy Deadfire until it's TB. So in order to sell more copies of Deadfire adding TB can make sense. That, and the fact that turn based mode was worked on for Pillars since PoE came out. So they didn't start from scratch. Maybe there wasn't super serious work before they decided to release it - but work has been done on it before. So when sitting together and brainstorming about ways to increase sales I can imagine somebody saying "Hey we have some TB stubs and it works works quite ok so far. Why don't we finish it and polish it up real nicely to be able to sell to TB fans?" And doesn't that make sense? Sure, not good for me and Gromnir and others who dropped the game after TB was patched in - but as I already said: we already paid for the game and all DLCs - so it's understandable that Obsidian favors getting some new players over losing a few older ones (not thinking that they planned to lose players with it though. It just happened - but I guess one could have guessed so given the history of "patching" things. )

PEN/AR mechanics wouldn't be so awful if there wasn't double inversion applied to underpenetration. It makes PEN and AR too important, especially on PotD where AR is raised through the board. You think "oh, -75% of base dmg isn't that bad" while those 75% get munched by double inversion and turn out to be a 300% malus. While that is somewhat realistic (a weapon that doesn't penetrate armor usually doesn't do much damage) it's also very frustrating in a game - if you don't know the PEN/AR mechanics in and out.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm collecting and will do some rework once I'm finshed with the first iterations of all passives... Next is Ranger (down below as usual): PS: classes' passives are done - exept for a few lvl-0-passives. For example there are some subclass-passives like Sharpshooter or Assassin - and the Wildstrike passives. Those will be next. Then I'll finish all the general passives (Martial Caster, Quick Summoning and so on).

Well bye then

At least that's what was said. They had difficulties reproducing that bug but finally nailsed it down. Can't remember where I read it, I think in the relating bug report thread.

Lalala... finished my first attempt on cipher's passives (scroll down to the bottom). Before you ask me what that brain+star thing is (/Greater Focus/Keen Mind): those are only slight variantions of the symbol that it used for "focus" in the actual game. I'm not happy with everything and it's really hard to come up with some meaningful symbols for all those abstract stuff as "echo", "soul" and whatnot. There's a lot of echos and souls here...

But - there is no battlefield in Pillars games (except maybe Yenwood Field). This is not a battlefield simulation with uniform weapons, horses and formations. It's adventuring. If you are a Rogue and learned how to use daggers but not spears - and then a tavern fight starts - why would you pull out a spear? Because you wouldn't. There will always be situations in the life of an adventurer where a dagger is the best option. But I don't expect an RPG to simulate such situations in detail. It's ok to just balance out the weapons in general to make everybody happy.

It's also one you don't have to fight.

Weird. But luckily there's an easy workaround. Thanks for both infos.

Maybe. But it's an argument that's based on an assumption. Let's wait for the big patch that is immanent (Steam is rumbling in preparation for the patch already) and then we will have a better understanding whether the issues are too massive to tackle or not.

Oh, I didn't even notice that Beguiler's Draining Whip reduces dmg. Maybe because as a Beguiler you actually don't use weapon attacks a lot since with the fixes from 4.1 you get much more focus from just casting an AoE deception spell if you have Draining Whip. Still... this should get fixed. Biting Whip doing nothing is unacceptable - and Draining Whip reducing dmg is a bit weird (but not unbalanced actually, I could live with that).

I also wanted to say that I saw a rise in forum activity since TB mode came out. This may be a hint that it indeed motivated players who are not interested in RTwP to buy the game and play it. Which might have been the no. 1 reason to introduce it in the first place.

It would be cool if chanters had a talent/ability that would make their chants stronger but remove the AoE so that only the chanter profits. Like he's humming the tune only for himself. Mith Fyr is very good with a party but if you want to play a damage dealing chanter (and no support) it's no alternative to The Dragon Thrashed for example. We have that (kind of) as the Bellower subclass in Deadfire.

Hm... I now stay logged in on my phone just fine. Or what do you mean?

But you don't "give away" money when crowdfunding. At least not if the project gets finished. I think that's the biggest point we differ. Crowdfunding is not charity and it's defining trait is not non-profit. Crowdfunding can also change forms a lot. As I said (and which nobody referred to yet) I can see how you only crowdfund parts of a game just to stay in touch with your fan better. Maybe try to find out which "special" features they would like. But I also think about Fig shares which are by no means meant to be non-profit but are still a form of a crowd funding stuff.

As long as the game gets finished the outcome is the same for you. For spening your money earlier you get more information and you can get invested more (see Banner Saga). And as I said: with a big company in the background it's very unlikely that your pledge will be lost. But it's always the player who will pay. I don't know if crowdfunding is indeed the "better" option for the developer. You take away risk and get paid in advance, but it also means you have to create a campaign which is a lot of extra work. Also keeping the backers updated means extra work (which won't get paid).