Boeroer

I also wonder what happens with Cleaving Stance if you kill an enemiy with a Riposte as a Swashbuckler...

Nalpasca is the most powerful monk subclass in my opinion (in the beta). Even the lousiest drug lasts for over 600 secs with decent alchemy and the Nalpasca will gain wounds so quickly you might have problems to spend them. Thus, he's totally ok as multiclass material. I'm thinking about Nalpasca/Ascendant - expansion of consciousness and ascension with drugs and so on, you know. Also, Hammering Thoughts and Thunderous Blows stack and the +10 INT from Duality will be great when it meets the ascension when at max focus.

Kalakoth's Minor Blights are one-handed. If you put a melee one-handed weapon in your offhand and summmon Blights you can attack with 30% attack speed bonus and even use Two Weapon Style (for additional 20%). Or you use one-handed Style and gain +12 ACC and hit-to-crit conversion. Besides that (in the beta) all other summoned wepapons are two handed.

Hello and welcome! I'll answer your questions one after the other, using your quotes: Yes, Backstab can be done from stealth and invisibility. There are several ways to turn invisible (talent, items, ability). Backstab doesn't need to be done from the back by the way. Sneak Attacks need afflictions on the enemy to work. They also work in the first 2 secs of combat automatically. So usually you get Sneak Attack + Backstab bonus when you attack from stealth and picked Backstab as an ability. Since rogues already have a lot of damage bonuses you can go with less MIG and put more points into DEX. You can go with a hireling party- no problem. Maybe you'll lack some money right at the start to buy them all at once though. Party compisition looks nice. I'd recommend a druid as supprt caste because he has all the things you mentioned. Depends. If he's more glassy he can do more damage - but if he's too glassy he'll do no damage because he's knocked out. However, if you don't drop RES and CON to 3 you can babysit him enough to get along without defensive talents. Just don't rush into melee. Let the tanks engage first. There are several ways to lower enemies DR and/or to stack some DR bypass on your rogue - like Vulnerable Attack and special grloves that give you DR bypass or spells. For non-main-character paladins or priests it doesn't matter. Except that every priest "subclass" has a different set of favored weapons. It's a talent that you can pick if you want a preist who also attacks with weapons and gives you +10 accuracy with two favored weapons of the god (kind of). You can look those up in the wiki. They are listed on the priest page. Hope that helps - I did a much moire detailed thing but it got lost when I send the answer - stupid forum - this is the somewhat shorter answer. If I should elaborate on points please let me know. One last thing: please give your paladin the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer and Forgemaster Gloves and then melt everything with Firebrand + Flames of Devotion + Intense Flames + Scion of Flame.

Yes, it works with Carnage. And Heart of Fury. It's instant focus overflow.

Very nice. This will def. go into my Deadfire portrait folder.

There are a some really stupid topics, but yours is definitely not among them. There are some nice synergies between chanter and monk. Few examples: Combine "Her courage thick as steel" (30pt damage soaking shield) with a "Dance of Death" (generating wound every 3 sec as long as not getting damaged): since the 30pt-damage shield kind of stacks you can make sure little to no damage comes trough (every single hit over 30 dmg will come through, the rest will get catched). This is nice because you can get wounds without getting hit and also the nice ACC bonus (up to +12) and it won't stop soon because you'll suffer damage seldomly. You can even combine it with Blade Turning. Turning Wheel and Iron WHeel will come back at higer power levels, so it might be very benefical to keep up 10 wounds all the time because you don't get hit a lot. With 10 wounds a Helwalker can get +10 MIG and like any other monk, he can also get +10 INT via Duality of Mortal Presence. This boosts chanter's AoE and stuff like the healing of Ancient Memory, the damage and healing of Soft Winds, the damage of Dragon Thrashed etc. like crazy. Mith Fyr and Lightning Strikes stack so that you'll have +30% shocking damage and +25% burn damage on all your weapons. With Duality of Mortal Presence and 10 INT from it you can also make sure that your linger time is so long that you can have two different (non-stacking) chants running without a gap. For example Mith Fyr and that really neat weakening chant I forgot the name of. The Long Pain works with Sure-Handed Ila, making them shoot even faster. Long Pain with Ila + Mith Fyr is very good. Skald's special feat (gets phrases when he crits in melee - sorry, melee only) works well with Swift Flurry (30% chance to trigger an additional attack on a crit - which can also be a crit and so on). THis can lead to a fasteer phrase cumulation of the Skald. Especially if you cast "Killers Froze Stiff" on the enemies first - because in Deadfire a paralyzed target gives you a 50% hit-to-crit conversion(!). And so on. That combo has some nice potential.

Then don't.

Skaen Godlike:

Then don't.

Yes, the damage penalty only affects the dagger, nothing else.

The damage penalty only applies to that dagger. If you wield 2 daggers with the modal on you get +20 deflection instead of +10 and each of them is doing less damage.

She grieves because she ran out of Coral Snuff...

Riposte could always do Full Attacks - but they buffed it in PoE from "20% on misses" to "30% on grazes + 20% on misses" because it was too weak. It's deflection only. I understand why they nerfed it in beta1 (no grazes and lots of misses) - but now, with the graze returned, they should put it back to where it was in PoE or else it's a total bummer. Don't think about rogue/paladin but think abour single class rogue. It shouldn't suck with a single class rogue. It's hard to achieve high miss chance without a shield. And with a shield you can't do a Full Attack Riposte (except with bashing shields). The only setup that I found worthwhile was Badgradr's Barricade + Riposte in PoE. The only thing where it's okish in beta4 is when you stack a ton of bonuses against disengagement attacks (Chanter/Rogue - those from passives, including chants, all stack) and then provoke disengagement attacks that will miss a lot. But it's very gimmiyk and quirky and no fun to play. I didn't test how Blade Turning+Riposte work in combination. Maybe I will do today...

Sure - typical Wood Elf with Coral Snuff crash.

He wants to eat an asian dish?

Extracted (correctly) by Yosharian from Josh's social media/stream statements.

You changing your profile pic threw me for a loop. Hehe - I made it yesterday as a sort of recreational activity and wanted to see how it looks as an avatar.

Then one shouldn't start it.

Devotions is still +20 and stacks with PER-inspirations - so it's still very good. Prayers are gone, but priests have a lot of low level inspiration spells that will remove the opposite afflictions (tiers don't matter) and they still have Suppress Affliction.

Riposte got fixed? Because it only had a 20% chance to trigger on misses only.

Right. It was confirmed that oc have fixed (unique) subclasses or none. So no choice when it comes to subclasses. There was a thread here that had all the quotes and answers.

If you want max face-floor connection and min weapon-enemy connecting then yes.

I guess UI problems.

Not really - because official companions start one level above hirelings and thus have a big advantage in the early game. And in the late game some of them even get unique talents/abilities nobody else can get. It's a self-induced illusion or hearsay that min-maxed hirelings generally make the game easier. How do you know the difference if you never used any of the official companions?