Boeroer

It did a pretty good job on the Percy Gang. Should be useful for generating more portraits for certain PoE-exclusive races maybe (like Aumaua, Orlan, Godlikes)?

Lol sorry, I read the quote and thought it was from @SilverArrowsMPwho just started with a Forbidden Fist, but the quote was from @Waski.

I don't get it. If it's a Forbidden Fist how do the tick damage of Hylea's Talons or the self dmg of scepters like Current's Rush matter?

16 is a suitable level imo.

Hey, there were some nice ones in attempts 8 to 13.

See PM.

You can always use a dagger + modal to increase your deflection against melee attackers (doesn't stack with active deflection buffs though), Griffin's Blade can give a little bit of a damage bonus to offensive spells, Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon can give you power levels for fire spells (or freeze in case of Sun & Moon), Kapana Taga or Squid's Grasp can make you immune to flanking (Rapier + Buckler is a nice combo for a Darcozzi anyway)... there are some more weapons which can make sense to just hold in your main hand while casting.

Paladin/Shifter can be pretty tanky in bear form because of the bonus AR from the several paladin passives and the very good AR of the bear's natural armor. At the same time the damage output is pretty good, too because Ring of Focused Flames + Flames of Devotion leads to good ACC, and FoD/Eternal Devotion lash and Wildstrike lash do stack - and you won't have any recovery penalty from armor. Add Scion of Flame for +1 PEN for FoD attacks. Add Exalted Endurance for more AR and passive healing. Goldpact is cool because the +4 AR from Gilded Enmity goes on top (except Elated Endurance, that +1 AR gets suppressed). A Bleak Walker/Shifter can even add Spirit of Decay to push FoD's PEN to +2. No particularly good idea about Darcozzi/Shifter - but all that FoD+Wildstrike and AR bonus+natural armor stuff also apply to this combo of course. The Fire Shield of Darcozzi's Lay on Hands lasts a long time. It also gives bonus freeze AR which complements Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan which can help you and your party in several encounters.

Maybe not no one, but def. not many. Monk subclasses offer substancial upsides while the downsides can be avoided/worked with. Shattered Pillar is cool for a party imo but not too great solo, especially against single tough foes (see Dragons, Megabosses etc.). It is easier to combine healing + wound generation from getting damaged, getting missed (Imagined Pain) using Enduring Dance (while using Dichotomous Soul to take most of the enemies' hits) or hostile effect expirtion (Forbidden Fist) than dealing enough damage against those foes in order to keep the wounds flowing. It's certainly doable, but in my experience a Shattered Pillar is nicer to play if he can focus on damage-dealing in a party while others tank the enemies. Forbidden Fist, Nalpasca and Helwalker are all well suited for solo. Nalpasca is nice because it has great wound generation even without being hit - but you have to watch out for enemies' Arcane Dampener: it also stops the effect of drugs and sends you into a crash (which is bad). There's enough drugs in the game so you don't need to be super economical, also a single drug will usually last for a whole fight (unless Arcane Dampener hits you). Helwalker is also nice. Not because the higher MIG will give you more damage and healing power (also good, but not superimportant when going solo) but because +10 all-stackable MIG means +20 fortitude. It's very nice to have +20 fortitude in a solo game. Most late-ish game afflictions that can disable you (=doom) will target your fortitude defense. A Helwalker with 10 wounds and Duality of Mortal Presence:CON will gain +40 to fortitude (and of course more health, damage and healing) which can be very useful. Forbidden Fist wants as high Resolve as possible in order to keep all the hostile effects on him super short. He feeds off their expiration so the shorter the better. He doesn't want resistances or immunies (messes with his wound generation). This mechanic pairs well with a solo game - because RES also raises deflection. Thus, a Forbidden Fist naturally tends to be more tanky than the usual monk - you can push that further with a shield + dagger (+modal) setup. For example Tuotilo's Palm allows you to gain extra deflection & reflex based on wounds (interesting for any monk subclass really) while also allowing to use the dual wieldig bonus and two-weapon style. The dagger will raise deflection even further. The Forbidden Fist attack ignores the main weapon and is a primary attack only, meaning yout will not attack with the shield bash either but still retain the fast recovery of your dual weapon setup. The Forbidden Fist attack is pretty strong and useful (enfeebling the enemies means no healing for them for example) and it will put a hostile effect aka "curse" on you (which is very short if you have maxed RES and use some fitting items - such as the "Ring of the Solitary Wanderer" which is perfect for a solo Forbidden Fist) which will give you a wound and healing when the curse expires. It helps to not have too high INT so the curse is even shorter (higher INT = longer curse). Because of all this, a Forbidden Fist usually is quite the defensive character - but at the same time pretty great at offense, too. It is only more difficult to grasp mechanically which repels most unexperienced players (unexperienced with the Forbidden Fist at least). I think most of the more experienced players here would prefer a Forbidden Fist. Its special features are a bit like the devs made this subclass for solo runs. Don't think that's the intention but it feels like it. Stats for a solo Forbidden Fist (rough suggestion, detailed values and a few points here an there don't mean much): MIG: o CON: o / - PER: ++ DEX: ++ INT: o / - RES: +++ You could dump CON and use mediocre INT and later pick Tough and Iron Wheel instead of Turning Wheel in order to boost CON and health. Or you can use mediocre CON and low INT and later pick Turning Wheel to keep INT somewhat mediocre. If you like higher MIG or max PER and/or DEX you can do that, too. A little variation to your liking and enjoyment is more important than some blueprint stats. Little changes are not super impactful. Race doesn't matter too much, but Nature Godlike isn't bad because Wellspring of Life can help you with the Power Level scaling of the Forbidden Fist attack (pushing it over the edge of the next quality tier) and other stuff - and it's on a lot because of Swift Strikes (or upgrades) as you already said - and/or Thunderous Blows. I would avoid a race with natural resistances (Coastal Aumaua, Wild Orlan, Mountain Dwarf, Wood Elf...). Unfortunately a downgraded affliction (via Resistance) causes problems with the wound generation of the Forbidden Fist. Human is good, too. The added ACC can help if things get dire. For other subclasses these stats might look different. For example usually Monks like high INT, combined with Turning Wheel for even more INT.

"orang-utan with ears of a lynx" should do the trick.

A PCGamesN article about Pentiment's UI and UX (it's very positive): https://www.pcgamesn.com/pentiment/obsidian-rpg-game-ux

Imo the skeletons aren't such a waste of an ability point because they have engagement. That means they will always stop enemies' movement, which can be a useful "CC effect" in all stages of the game - even if their weapons don't scale at all and thus they will provide 0 offense at some point (worms, too by the way). Also there are numerous tricks the party can use if you have skeleton summons available (see Grave Calling's Chilling Grave enchantment or a confused Berserker with Blood Thirst who's attacking the same target as the skeleton, killing some with Carnage - or even a single class Paladin with Devine Retribution who gets 2 Zeal for every skeleton that dies). But the objectively best Chanter summons are indeed the Ancient Instruments of Death, especially the upgraded ones (because more). Note that a Beckoner does not get (2*3)+1 = 7 weapons with the upgraded invocation but indeed 2*(3+1) = 8. They have less health and don't last as long, but the offensive output of 8 animated weapons is quite overwhelming.

Afaik lashes do not influence SA's damage. Only direkt additive damage modifiers (Sneak Attack, MIG-bonus, Deathblows, Takedown Combo, Shattered Vengeance's Curse, Inspired Beacon and so on) do. That's why Rogue/Soulblade delivers such nice SA strikes. Especially Streetfigther (heated up and on the edge) and Assassin (stealthed or invisible on crit). Speaking of Assassin: unmodded Backstab bonus should also work.

When fights are difficult you can start them with a trap and then summon from stealth. Not in the fight against "Eamund the Fox" in that Dunnage alley though.

I'm not particularly invested in this matter tbh. If Caedebald's Blackbow gets pierce/corrode that's fine. My main concern is to make the mechanics consistent, sensible and predictable. That's why I found that keyword/immunity issue so annoying. If that's been solved the details on how to design the weapon dmage in order to make it work are cool with me if it helps solving the problem.

Hm, I have no idea if this works. The game object must be there (with your game) - the savegame would only reference it. But maybe the pre-order-items are already in the g ame files but not unlocked. No idea.

I played both SC Psion and Psion/Troubadour. The slower focus gain (it's not THAT much slower though) gets balanced out by the fact that the Troubadour generates 1 phrase very 3 secs. You can alternate invocation and cipher spell with almost no waiting time for new resources. Also the combination of multiple summons (and in case of Many Lives Pass By they don't even need any action time or recovery) with charm and dominate is incredibly powerful. Often there's only one enemy left who's not controlled - and that single enemy faces an army of summons and turned foes that make short work of him. The most notable advantage of the SC Psion was (for me) that he reached Puppet Master a lot earlier. Casters are good picks. I'd say Bloodmage would be nice because unlimited spells. I can also see a nice synergy with Monk (Helwalker or Nalpasca). Monks have a good summoning ability, Duality of Mortal Presence:INT works very well for Cipher spells and so does Thunderous Blows. Dance of Death (and drugs for a Nalpasca) let you gain resources without doing anything (just avoiding getting hit - like with Soul Mind). If you use Xoti's Lantern you can gain 1 wound and 1 mortification from killing an enemy (or ally - like a dominated enemy), too. Mortification can be used for Enduring Dance of Death and Swift Strikes, wounds for summons, Thundering Blows and Duality. Psion/Ancient could be nice, too. Again good summons. As @abotsaid: Psion/Priest would work. You can even gain focus while withdrawn. I didn't play it, but Furyshaper/Psion might be a nice fit. Terrifying wards in combination with Secret Horrors, Mind Control and so on sound fun. A Ranger/Psion could gain great accuracy for single target CC (charm/dominate) and stuff like Disintegrate. Disintegrate works beautifully with Takedown Combo (all ticks get +100% dmg while Takedown Combo lasts - if you don't remove it by hitting the victim with an actual attack).

You should like Psion/Troubadour. It's one of the most versatile combos, both classes have "automatic" resource regain (only time has to pass), it has healing, summons, mind control and CC and damage. Another plus for solo: It was one of the builds that completed the Ultimate Challenge - so you know it's 100% valid for solo runs. For me it also was one of the most enjoyable mluticlasses to play. Imo players almost always initially underestimate Psion because they think the focus generation is slow. It it not because it a) scales with Power Level and b) it always works, even while you cast, attack, recover or are even unable to act (like when withdrawn). The only thing that stops it is getting damaged - but with a combo such as Troubadour that's rel. easy to avoid because of all the summons and charm/dominate.

I wouldn't call Tekehu an OP AoE nuker until he reaches Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom (preferably with Effort in his hands) - and that's not even exclusive to his subclass. But foe-only Chillfog (which is exclusive) is extremely convenient and has noticable impact on most fights. It's not about the damage alone but on the blinding (tier-3 affliction!) of all enemies around your party while your friends are completely unfazed.

Yeah. And obviously we'll have to repeat all these points in a few months again because nobody will reread all this before posting and that's why

I mean Feargus must've thought Deadfire would sell really well. How else could he justify to add Full VO near the freaking END of the production just to match D:OS2. Wild...

Exactly. Especially all those games that were reviewed less favorably. I agree though that being part of a big IP such as D&D/Pathfinder etc. will help a game even if it's not as good or if the marketing campaign sucked - just because the IP in itself is a big publicity factor nd also a factor for customer (player) loyalty. So if you launch a game with a rel. fresh IP (Eora) on an unknown crowdfunding platform (fig.co), use a rel. niche gaming mode which is rel. unpopular atm (RTwP), choose an unorthodox setting ("Pirates, arrr!"), drop the ball with marketing (saw a ton of Tyranny ads everywhere - but nothing much outside of Twitter for Deadfire), have no multiplayer (which draws significant audience to titles like D:OS) - I just assume it's enough individual reasons to let a game not sell well. Add increased competition (also in terms of price) and maybe a little bit of saturation for nostalgia-fed games and the game might indeed tank at release. And all of those points don't require to actually buy and play the game in order to take effect. They prevent you from buying the game just like that.

As I said: secondary conditions. Lots of "ifs" just to make one's theory somewhat plausible in comparison to the simple ones. All that didn't seem to have hurt the sales of Tyranny, Pathfinder, Solasta etc. which had worse reviews from critics and users. One certainly has had plenty of options to pick something other than one of those titles, too. Sales of all those alternatives with worse reviews should have been low then as well. Did not happen. So what is more likely to make players stay away from a cRPG that has better reviews and scores than the alternatives? a) "I bought PoE but I didn't like it a lot because of the numerous shortcomings it has. But I didn't ever bother to write anything bad about it either - and when Deadfire came out it surely looked nice and interesting and all... but suddenly there were so many alternatives that had worse ratings - so I picked those instead." or b) "Look, first of all I didn't know that Deadfire even existed, right? Never saw it on Kickstarter or so. So then when I learned about it it was reviewed quite favorably but it looked like a somewhat light-hearted pirates-of-the-carribean-themed game. Heck, it didn't even have a multiplayer option so I thought that wasn't my cup of tea and thus I bought something else. Until later it became more apparent that it's not a pirate game... and then it went on sale and I thought 'eh whatever', bought and played it and it was actually very cool. Hence see the review I wrote."

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/pentiment-game-preview

I don't know if it was changed at some point. Years ago I did intense testing of Marking and Coordinated Attacks with all sorts of constellations when I was playing and later writing that "Counselor Ploi" build and later again for some other Paladin build that totally focused on combining Marking, Coordinated Attacks and the Darcozzi's Inspiring Liberation (the tandem partner was a Cipher).