Boeroer

Deep Wounds and Deathblows do work with spells (Sneak Attack does not). For Deep Wounds to work it has to be pierce/crush or slash dmg though. Blooded does work with spells iirc. I think the rest doesn't in general. However, there are some spells that count as melee attacks and thus work with all lashes if I'm not mistaken. I believe Jolting Touch was one of them. I did something like that on the Monsterlasher build (in the build list).

Ah yes, Good Friend. Also doesn't come too late. Yes, the Cap is a very good headpiece.

Dazzling Lights does friendly fire in Deadfire - maybe that's why I remember it incorrectly for PoE... If it's not a solo char: Holy Power and Crowns for the Faithful should be your friends. Funny thing: once you triggered Defiant Resolve you will be over the threshold for q00% misses because of Defiant Resolve itself. Contemplating if there's some spellbinding gear that targets will and that you could use on yourself - but so far nothin comes to mind. Redfield for example has an aura that constantly attacks Will (like a Dragon) - but I know no way to turn it against oneself.

No, with the CP the focus generation only stops when the Psion receives a critical hit (which is too good imo). Blood Sacrifice is an auto-hit, so the focus will still flow. Technically the setup of main weapon + the bashing shield Tuotilo's Palm IS a dual wielding setup. You can pick Two Weapon Style and that works. Full Attacks of the Rogue will use both weapons (main + shield bash) and all attacks (including primary ones such as Soul Annihilation) will have the reduced recovery time of a dual wielder. It is ALSO a weapon & shield setup. You can pick Weapon and Shield Style, too and it works. This, combined with the spamming of a primary attack (Soul Annihilation) makes this combo so good: you mostly attack with the main hand only and avoid the weaker bash attack - but you keep all the speed advantage and all the defensive advantage. You can totally use another dual weapon set. But of course you will be a bit more squishy. Defenses have increasing returns. A few more points of deflection (and reflex) can make quite the difference. If you get grazed instead of hit the damage you receive is a lot lower. If you get hit instead of crit the penetration will be lower, too which might lead to the enemy underpenetrating which also means a lot less damage that you receive. At the same time you won't gain a lot of dps because your strongest attack is Soul Annihilation and that doesn't care for the offhand weapon. But for RP purposes it's totally fine to use something else of course. Sun & Moon is very good for a Soulblade because it does two weapon attack rolls with each strike: one with the fiery flail head, the other with the frosty one. Soul Annihilation dumps all your current focus into raw damage (+bonuses from weapon quality, Sneak Attack, Deathblows etc.) as soon as it connects. If you connect with the first flail head you will dump all your focus. It's 0 then. The second flail head will connect afterwards als already generate focus again! So you will execute Soul Annihilation and still go out of it with new focus. This means that you can actually spam Soul Annihilation all the time if you wish. Afaik that's the only weapon that can do this - that's why I recommend this one specifically. Of course any other weapon works with this character, too. But this special feature of Sun & Moon is... well... special. Yes - not much kills backline dudes faster than Soul Annihilation. Beguiler is better used as a caster of debuffs with the occasional weapon attack. Because Beguilers can gain a lot of focus from casting a large-AOE deception on a buch of enemies (Phantom Foes, Secret Horrors etc.) you usually want to start combat with them casting a bunch of Deception spells and not zip around towards the backline. The secret sauce of the Beguiler is that - officially - he only gains focus when casting deception spells on enemies that qualify for Sneak Attacks (aka have an affliction) - but the Deception spells already put an affliction on the targets and only after that the gme checks if there will be a focus refund for that. So a Beguiler doesn't need to apply afflictions with something else (melee attacks or whatever) - he can just cast his stuff right away and burst from focus gain (if he hits enough enemies). At the same time he doesn't do any extra melee damage. Soulblade - as I said - has the perfect melee tool for hunting backlines. Of course the combination Trickster/Beguiler makes a lot of sense thematically and RP-wise. But for the role you want to fill it's not the perfect combination.

No idea about the duration and I never tried that out, but that should work. Defiant Resolve also triggers on non-misses. It triggers every time your will gets attacked, no matter miss/graze/hit or crit. That's why it is so very good against dragons (who do a will attack every few secs with their fear aura). So even if your spell isn't 100% missing your own character it would still be a viable approach I think. I just thought about Dazzling Lights being the safer (and cheaper) option - and I thought it did friendly fire, too... but the wiki says it's foe only? But I really thought it was not. Hm...

Well, at least you made me chuckle.

Use this with Sun & Moon and the small bashing shield Tuotilo's Palm and you'll have the speed of a dual wielder without actually using the weak bash (concentrate on Soul Annihilation), the defenses of a shield user in combination with the Trickster's Illusion spells, excellent movement ability (zipping around) with Rogue's "Escape", the high damage bonuses of a Rogue/Cipher in combination with one of the highest dmg weaapon abilities (Soul Annihilation). It's a very well rounded setup which is a Jack of all (melee) Trades without actually being mediocre at any of those trades but pretty great. It takes a few levels until the sturdyness happens and you also need some levels to gather the equipment (although weapon and shield come fairly early), but then it's very cool. Damage is great right from the start and so is movement. The sturdyness is very helpful because causing trouble behind enemy lines is a hard knock life. --- Forbidden Fist/Beguiler or Soulblade is also very nice - but since the wound mechanic of the Forbidden Fist is a bit harder to really grasp and needs to be build around I wouldn't recommend that over the Trickster/Soulblade for a first run. --- Troubadour/Psion is great - but yeah: there's no point in using a weapon. This is all about spell spamming. It's lots of fun though imo. Psion in melee is generally not a good idea, even as Bloodmage/Psion because suffering damage stops the focus generation. This even includes the self dmage of blood sacrifice iirc. If you want to go melee I would prefer another Cipher subclass. --- I think the most fitting multiclass for zippy-hit-the-priority-targets is your first suggestion, the Trickster/Soulblade.

While PoE and Deadfire used Unity3D, Avowed is using the Unreal Engine.

It should. I didn't test Charge too much back in the day (used it mostly on a dual sabre Eder and tried some things out before committing) and it was some years ago - but Riposte, Carnage etc. are similar "no animation" attacks and they do trigger weapon effects. Afaik they just don't have an obvious animation (oozes just going a bit flat like they do before they attack) but still suffer from the short-term cc effect? But maybe I'm misremembering. I also don't recall if some tough nuts of the expansions are maybe immune to prone (eyeing at the Eyeless mostly, höhö) but atm nothing sprung to mind. I had the most success against bosses with a combination of charm (Munacra Arret, Spirit Spiral) and Prone. Only one dragon of the bog variant is immune to charm iirc. Often enough both effects were on a fighter since fighters come with a great universal accuracy. So maybe that's an option, too? I can imagine a character with Munacra Arret and Rapier + Dagger gives very strong and fitting vaillian and aristocratic vibes.

It's a "hidden" Full Attack at the target enemy on top(!) of the crush damage Charge does in the first place. That makes it extremely effective against that one target enemy - and nice against the ones in the line of fire, too. The Full Attack is not mentioned in the description but it should be there. And of course a Full Attack is better with a dual weapon setup - and the crush damage doesn't rely on any weapon stats (it's works more like spell damage). Imo that's not a reason to abandon two handers - you can't use Charge too often anyways - but it might be a reason to contemplate about one or two dual wielders. I think with BotEP (which means a source of Marking/+10 ACC on another teammate) an auto-prone weapon is quite exciting. There's no immunity to prone and with high INT and decent recovery you can perma-prone enemies if you team up with the bearer of the BotEP. And you can spare the Knockdowns for the times when the auto-prone doesn't occur.

If the Watcher has good PER and takes stuff like Weapon Focus then I think I would use one of the prone-/stun-on-crit weapons so he adds some CC to his weapon attacks. The following two-handed variants can be aquired fairly early: The Temperacl (Great Sword, prone on crit) The Hours of St. Rumbalt (Great Sword, prone on crit) Tall Grass (Pike, prone on crit) The one-handed ones all come later. I think overall I would prefer the Hours oSR because it has dual damage and does +50% dmg on crit which is cool with a char who has high PER but low MIG. The Temperacl could be a substitute until you get to the Hours oSR. Tall Grass is also nice bc. of the higher crit chance and the reach (which might be important if one goes for lots of melee fighters for sure) - the only thing which might be annoying is the pierce-only damage. But you could use a backup weapon of course. Like the aforementioned Temperacl (Great Sword nd Pike share the same weapon focus). I think I would give one Fighter a Firebrand setup (Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer, Forgemaster Gloves) because it rules until you get Durgan Steel - and it stays great as backup weapon throughout the whole game. I also like Tidefall a lot. High MIG kind of mandatory though. But it's potentially the best melee dps option. Generally Charge is better with a dual wielding setup (Full Attack at the target destination). So I would also look into that. Dual war hammers are a good pick imo. A really good auto-attacks dps setup is Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger (maybe later Drawn in Spring if you like) because those come early and the double speed enchantment makes it quite easy to reach 0 recovery early in the game - which rocks. Somewhat calls for a vaillian character though imo with that "duelist" setup. I reckon you might want at least one guy with a shield to take the main tank position?

Haha, I also only now noticed that I was posting in the PoE subforum, not the Deadfire one. A well - maybe somebody else reads this and finds it helpful or inspiring. I could write about PoE weapons for a 6-Fighter party for PoE as well though... Btw.: 6 Fighters, all with Charge, make the first few seconds of the encounter really entertaining.

Edit: For whatever brainrotting reason I posted the following lines under the impression I was giving advice for Deadfire, not PoE. But maybe it's still helpful for somebody. Some players do want to play Deadfire after PoE, so... --- Anyway, I'm in the mood to share a combo of weapons that I like and which would work with a party of Fighters/something. Morning Star - Saru Sichr if there's a Fighter/Monk with Swift Flurry (double chance to proc), else Willbreaker, esp. if it's a Fighter/Wizard (Phantom + char can stack twice the Will debuff on one enemy), Devoted is a good pick for Morning Star because it has good starting PEN and dual damage. Lowring Fortitude with the modal. defenses debuffed: Fortitude -25, Will -3 on hit (up to -30 with a Phantom) Blade of the Endless Paths (esp. for a Fighter/Wizard). The Marking enchantment is great in general and you can stack it twice on an enemy with he help of a phantom, vaporizing the enemy's deflection. defenses debuffed: Deflection -4 on crit (up to -40 with a Phantom) alternatively WotEP if you want to use it with Clear Out a lot Sun & Moon - good for Fighter/Soulblade, Fighter/Skald, Fighter/Monk, Fighter/Priest, Fighter/Paladin... lowering Reflex with the modal (-25). Kapana Taga - great for getting engagement without using Defender Stance and lowering Will with the modal (-25). A Fighter/Wizard can summon Draining Touch and a Phantom and then use the club and Miasma to lower the Will of the enemy to basically nothing and then let the phantom crit all the time (because Draining Touch targets Will instead of Deflection). Has dual damage, so backup weapon not desperately needed. Ngati's Tush - works best (in this case where you want a Fighter) with Berath's Blessing for the skill points and either Fighter/Druid or a Fighter/Ranger - because they get the highest Survival bonus - but also very good on a Fighter/Troubadour in combination with Spirit Frenzy and The Long Night's Drink. You want to enchant it with Hunter of Hunters and max out Survival (so best to make this you main char). The aura is auto-lowering enemies' non-deflection defenses by 10 (at 20 Survival), the modal lowers deflecion by 10 on hit, Spirit Frenzy lowers Fortitude by 10 on any hit (including chants), The Long Night's Drink lowers Fortitude by another 10. Use Ben Fidel's Neck as main invocation, then follow up with stuff like Killers Froze stiff or so. This Howler alone can lower enemies' defenses by DEF:-20, REF:-20+, FOR:-40+, WIL:-20+ without using an active ability (besides chant + frenzy). With this weapon combo in the party you can lower almost any enemies' defenses into the ground since the debuffs stack with each other and most stuff you can add via spells and other abilities. Add some ACC buffs and usually tough nuts become very easy. Only thing you need is some survivability - because grinding down the enemies defenses of a boss with multiple hits/crits (Willbreaker, Blade otP) will take some time. Except Ngati's Tusk those weapons can be aquired fairly easy/early. I just use another pike before that. The all can use the modal for -10 deflection. Sometimes I add the Cap of the Laughingstock to the wearer of Ngati's Tusk so that he also has an -10-Deflection aura. But it prevents frighten/terrify to work so don't use it all the time.

Touch of Grass > Touch of Root imo. I think the build is totally fine. For aesthetic reasons I personally would combine the Helm of the Falcon with the Devil of Caroc Breastplate (beautiful combo imo) or the Blackened Plate (which is very fitting for a Priest of Berath of course) with its own helmet.

Yeah - the damage that you then inspect in the combat log can be misleading in this case I guess - because the detailed info shows what got rolled by the "dice". But that info doesn't show that you can't deal more damage than the enemy has health left. Would have been cool if the tooltip showed that last step as well.

Yeah I played a solo "regenerating" Boar Druid with Veteran's Recovery and Wildstrike Corrode, corrode/raw spells in combo with spellbinding items and he was lots of fun. Druids are fun in general. But I often feel they lack a bit of accuracy if you don't want to use consumables (which I try to avoid for whatever mentally unsound reason, hehe).

Thanks for the kind words. I haven't seen (or better: don't remember - getting old ) those older Druid solo vids although I know @baldurs_gate_2 from the forums, thanks for bringing them to my attention.

What do you mean with "Aloth is trying to tank"? You can just order him to do whatever you wish him to do, right? Or do you mean that he is mostly running on AI and that AI is now suddenly trying to tank enemies? Then you can alter the AI settings so that he won't try that anymore. There is a whole "scripting" tool for building behavioral blocks for the AI, maybe that's interesting and fun to play around with for a bit until the companions behave like you wish on their own (mostly). As @NotDumbEnoughsaid: classes don't have very fixed roles. Since there are so many different abilities and subclasses and also multiclassing most class combos can fulfill a lot of different roles. There are some tendencies like Priest = great support, Druid = good healer, Fighter = good tank and so on - but you can achieve that with other classes and some creativity as well. The attributes don't have a ton of impact. They do change other values a bit and are influencing your defenses - but you always have 78 base points so the sum of the defenses is always the same (without counting abilities). In general a pure buffer only needs INT and DEX, a damage dealer mostly PER, DEX and MIG, some also INT, defensive characters usually want high RES because it helps against most conventional attacks (deflection), pure healers want high MIG, INT and DEX and so on. But a few points here and ther don't make a noticable difference.

yes

AFAIR I didn't see a solo Druid doing all those bosses yet - cool!

After the initial phase of experimenting with all the different ship types I nowadays don't buy those anymore - and I always sink every named ship in the Deadfire with the starting Sloop. It's perfectly capable of sinking every other ship with the right combination of upgrades, cannons, crew and sailors' experience. Buying another ship is burning money - but it can be fun nonetheless. For example with the Voyager you can fight very differently than with a Sloop because you can fire the cannons in the direction you are going. So you can - for example - equip the Voyager with a flamethrower in the stern, sail towards the enemy really close and really quick (where most cannons are very uneffective), turn around and torch them with the flamethrower every 2 rounds. If the enemy wants to close the gap for boarding you can simply sail away a tiny bit (you will always be faster wit the right sails) and continue - while they can't shoot at you. It's rel. foolproof, too.

Yeah, right?

Depends. If your hit quality suffers then it's not good. And it will suffer most of times.

That vomiting only occurs if you are hungover. You only get a hangover if you drink a beverage during one rest and then the nex rest you don't. So there's two ways to prevent hangover: always use a beverage instead of food during rests (is a must to unlock Pukestabber anyway) during rest, wear the Ring "Drunkard's Regret". It prevents hangovers if you wear it while resting with alcohol. You don't need to wear it after resting, only during. Pukestabber is a very good weapon if you use alcohol instead of food. I'd say it's the best dagger in terms of dps because its speed buff also works for any dagger in the other hand. I would put an emphasis on DEX and PER, then INT, then MIG, then CON and then RES. High accuracy is important for an Assassin because you don't want to miss or graze with your attacks from stealth or invisibility - instead you want to critically hit if possible. A nice second class for an Assassin who works with DoTs like True Love's Kiss and Gouging Strike can be a Paladin - because he has access to Brand Enemy which also ist an endless DoT and even is an auto-hit, meaning you cannot miss, graze or crit with it. It doesn't do an attack roll - it just always hits like so. It also is an instant, long rnge cst with no recovery. So you can apply it to a bunch of enemies in a very short time. But other classes can also work well as combo, for example Wizard or Monk.

A dual dagger Rogue build is totally viable and very fast if you use Lover's Embrace + Pukestabber. Very good against high armor targets as well if you combine the high attack speed with abilities that apply (raw) damage over time (DoT) that doesn't rely on the weapon damage (Arterial Strike + Gouging Strike + Ring the Bell + Toxic Strike). An Assassin/Whatever can apply two neverending DoT instances from stealth to a hihg priority target: True Love's Kiss from Lover Embrace + Gouging Strike. That target will surely die (but it may take some time).