Boeroer

Rapiers work but are limited to pierce damage so you need a bsckup. Something like Scordeo's Edge with Adaptive + Sun & Moon is a good alternative. Instead of using Rapiers + modal (it doesn't stack with other active acc buffs) you can use multihit-weapon such as Sun & Moon, blunderbusses - or against multiple opponents - Fire in the Hole (Chain Shot) + Hand Mortar (Blinding Smoke). That also minimizes the chance of grazes and misses, especially if there are many enemies in one place (which is the norm when going solo). Only one of the many hit rolls has to crit for the refund zu happen. Guile refund is capped at 4 max (2 per hand) - but internally, while Guile is executed, the Guile refund of multiple crits gets registered and leads to very high damage bonuses* - before it is cut back to 4 at the end. An Assassin with Vanishing Strikes and Gambit as well as Backstab can do tremendous damage with Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole by just using Vanishing Strike and Gambit in the middle of an enemy pack. Vanishing Strike's invisibility never breaks. Assassinate adds +25 acc which ensures even less grazes. Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak adds accuracy and stuns all enemies. Streetfighter is also excellent if you use Powder Burns bc. of the reduced reloading speed. Maxed INT is recommended. Against single tough targets obviously mortars are not great. Also check out Rust's Poignard. * Gambit grants 10% bonus crit dmg per point of Guile.

I worded that not too well. I had 7 Guile when I activated Gambit. It costs 4 Guile, the crit conversion and bonus dmg are calculated with the remaining 3 Guile.

Hm, I get funky results. The Boltcatcher Gloves get higher dmg bonuses (+180%) than my Guile (7) implies, but then the Gambit roll itself at the end doesn't get extra dmg bonus. It's different than with mortars. And of course shortly after that try I did another one and the game crashed.

I didn't try it out but it could. I don't know if there's an internal cap somewhere, but with a mortar I had often numbers around +300% in the combat log iirc. It isn't that obvious then because the individual hits of a mortar have low base damage. But how would you stop the crit chain so that the game doesn't crash? With 100% hit-to-crit conversion that seems hard to do. Maybe only use it when Guile is low... PS: tried to test it, only had 3 Guile at the moment I used Gambit - game crashed. Lol.

Arcane Archer/Ascendant is a good pick if you want to concentrate more on the shooting and less on casting spells: the soul whip damage is 10% less while not ascended, but increased while Ascended and soul whip doesn't turn off. This combo can use Spearcaster (+modal) to great effect vs. single tough targets for perma-prone. It profits from Arcana directly (which Arcane Archer wants to raise anyway) and gains great accuracy that way - and it proftis twice from Arcana if you use the Arcane Archer's imbued shots with it. And then this multiclass can use Frostseeker against mobs. Frostseeker has the added benefit that it counts as elemental attack (no acc malus for Arcane Archer with auto-attacks) and generates focus superquickly against mobs (because the AoE that procs on crits also generates focus). I played an SC Psion with a special attention to Puppet Master some time ago - and she was very impactful (SC leads to 2 more focus per second due to higher Power Levels). I'm sure Ydwin can also be nice as SC with a good setup even though she has to harvest focus the conventional way. SC Ciphers can use Shared Nightmare which is pretty bonkers with any AoE weapons (except Wahai Poraga which doesn't scale its AoE size with and Keeper of the Flame bc. the AoE doesn't generate focus) and in combination with Reaping Knives on a party member. You'll have lots of focus quickly and then a huge AoE for your spells. Ydwin as Cipher/Rogue can generate focus more quickly, but then advances more slowly through the Power Levels (later access to abilities) and misses out on Time Parasite, Reaping Knives and Shared Nightmare of course. But as a ranged "low maintenance" party member the Cipher/Rogue works better I guess.

Wizard/Chanter is always interesting because you can prolong all benefical effects with Wall of Draining, including effects from chants (including Ancient Memory and Mercy and Kindness) even though you don't sing them anymore. That is correct. It scales with character level but has no weapon proficiency (modal). Thus it is not great for Devoted. Since it already scales with character level it does not scale with Transcendent Suffering or Monastic Unarmed Training. Sure. It's also good to have a setup of fist + Tuotilo's Palm for backup. There might be enemies who are quite resistant or even immune to corrode damage (which is the damage type of Draining Touch). I personally value +5ACC over +10% damage. It's only additive damage and the bash (which counts as unarmed) as well as the fists base damage isn't so high that +10% means a lot. The bash does 8-10 or 9 base damage on average. +10% means +1 dmg per bash. Fists are 14-19, so 16.5 on average base dmg. +10% means additional 1.7 crush damage per strike. It's more if you use abilites because they scale up the base damage with Power Level a bit. But still... not my favorite enchantment. +5 ACC is more useful imo. Ah, by the way: Draining Touch does not cause Deep Wounds (Rogue) because it does not deal pierce, slash or crush damage. depends on what you plan to use. the Pike modal works for Spirit Lance - but only the initial target, not the AoE. It redices enemies deflection by 10. This can be helpful against high deflection enemies. You only need to graze and their deflection drops by 10. It's nice imo. As most modals you must decide when it's worth turning on and when not. Seems good to me. Human would be my pick, too. Fighting Spirit is so easy to trigger with a Bloodmage. Puh... so many options... I really like quick reloading, high ACC arbalest shooters as low-maintenance party members most of the time - but they can be extrmely valuable when they pin down difficult enemies with their modal. Something like Ranger/Paladin, Ranger/Chanter, Ranger/Cipher, Ranger/Rogue and so on. Another nice, low maintenance party member with big moments I like is dual pistol SC Kind Wayfarer. But you need a Chanter in the party then, too (for limitless summons which can be turned into free Zeal via Divine Retribution). That is the most effective approach. But the juggling of Grimoires can be a bit inconvenient at times. Which spells you use all the time depends on you. I think self-buffs you almost always want to cast at the start of battle are good candidates. Devil of Caroc's Breastplate heals per crit. I may be nice in combination with Blood Sacrifice. With AoE stuff like Spirit Lance I try to hit the 35 INT cap, so items such as Charm of Bones (+2) and Heaven's Cacophony (+2) are favorites of mine. Also Aloth's Armor (+15% AoE size) as well as the pet Loki (also +15% AoE size). But it's all not super important imo.

The normal values of the axes will scale with level no problem. But I guess the lash will stay low because it only scales with the Priest's dispositions - if those are in line with their god's dispositions. I suspect that wouldn't work with a non-priest. But I haven't tried. Maybe it works if you character adheres to Rymrgand's dispositions - I mean you can accumulate disposition points as non-priest as well. Just don't know if that gets translated to the axes then. Worth a try I guess. Draining Touch is the most powerful one handed weapon in the game (besides stuff like Scordeo's Edge+Salvation of Time or Wall of Draining or Grave Calling with skeletons and such things)... if you can keep it with the Grimoire switching trick. Not much comes close imo. The very high base damage, combined with some damage bonuses, leads to hefty dmg per hit, the health draining and the weakening as well as the targeting of Will make it more powerful. There's a reason why you are supposed to only get one proper hit or crit with it. In combo with a club+modal it's even better. It's also very good on a Wizard/Monk. You don't need Enervating Blows anymore, the draining is nice to stay healthy (even makes Helwalker less scary) and Swift Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming in combination with Merciless Gaze and the ultra low Will of the enemy from club strikes and spells means that additional attacks will proc frequently. Or improve the dmg per hit with Lightning Strikes, both options are great. Turning Wheel is also nice in combination with that high dmg per hit. Hylea's Talons add a lash, Baby Boar does so, too. Wizard can pick Spirit of Decay which grants +1 PEN with the Draining Touch weapon. Add Monk's Thunderous Blows and you are at +3. --- Another nice combo with Wizard and Draining Touch is Steel Garrote. Steel Garrote drains health if you attack afflicted enemies. Draining Touch put weakened on enemies: nice synergy. You drain twice from the same attack which is great for using Blood Sacrifices, you can achieve enormous defense and AR numbers. You will have nice synergy between Eternal Devotion and your spells, too (+15% burning lash to spells, Eternal Devotion works like that). Eternal Devotion's accuracy can get buffed by 10 points with the Ring of Focused Flames. That means that not only do you drop enemies' Will via club and spells but also raise your accuracy by +20 (FoD+10, Ring +10). If you don't like Steel Garrote then Kind Wayfarer also works nicely. Instead of draining twice you will heal in an AoE with white flames and drain health with Draining Touch. Also nice for Blood Sacrifice. Rest is the same as Steel Garrote or any other Paladin/Bloodmage: Lay on Hands with Wall of Draining etc. --- A brutal combo can be Soulblade/Bloodmage. Citzal's Spirit Lance is awesome with focus gain and Soul Annihilation. --- Bloodmage/Unbroken is also very good: Mob Stance, Kapana Tanga club with +2 engagement, Hold the Line, Draining Touch and Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage as well as an Essential Phantom. Enemies will get terrified and disengage, you and the phantom will deal incredible disengagement attacks with Draining Touch (remember: diseng. attacks get +100% dmg). Mob Stance cleaves are likely to kill enemies on the spot, leading to potential chain-cleaving and so on. --- Bloodmage/Furyshaper: combine Draining Touch with Barbaric Smash, Bloodlust, Bloody Slaughter and most importantly Blood Thirst. Also Carnage profits from the high base damage. Summon a Fear Ward so you don't need to cast Ryngrim's spells. Do similar things like with the Unbroken but at higher speeds but less potent disengagement attacks. Instead of cleaving you will have higher speed and 0 recovery after a kill. Barbaric Smash + Bloody Slaughter does enormous damage if you use it as finisher against near death enemies - and costs nothing if it kills. Bloodmage/Berserker also works but is very tricky.

Kind of. Gambit is (unnecessarily) complex: The max refund of Guile is 4. You cannot generate more Guile than you spend. So the best case is that Gambit costs you nothing. The described refund of 2 can happen twice if you dual wield, bc. you have two weapon strikes. It doesn't matter how often you crit during those strikes (for example with an AoE weapon like a rod or mortar - or a multihit-weapon like a blunderbuss or Sun & Moon). If only one of the rolls during that strike is a crit you will get a refund of 2 for that strike. If you do 2 strikes (bc. two weapons) and both of them contain at least one crit you get 4 Guile back. Best case. Gambit shows 100% crit conversion with 10 Guile - but the 4 points of Guile you pay for Gambit itself get subtracted before the conversion applies during striking. So during the execution of Gambit your Guile is 4 less and thus the conversion drops accordingly (-10% per missing Guile). Therefore it is recommended to raise your max. Guile well over 10. Check out Devil of Caroc Breastplate for 2 extra Guile (=+20% crot conversion). You want that big chance to crit with every Gambit roll. This then means free Gambit executions as long as you don't graze or miss (or get interrupted or spend lots of Guile for something else first). A hidden gem: Internally, while Gambit is excutedand the game is calculating stuff, the Guile refund is NOT limited. It only gets cut down to max +2 per strike at the end. But while you are striking and doing crits the "internal" Guile counter can go through the roof. Since the crit damage bonus of Gambit (+20% dmg per point of Guile) relies on the Guile you currently have l, this can mean that you can achieve huge dmg bonus numbers during the execution of Gambit. For example with Hand Mortar+Blinding Smoke and Fire in the Hole+Chain Shot you can roll a ton of crits with every strike/shot and your internal Guile refund will skyrocket, giving you +200% dmg bonus and more for subsequent attack rolls during that shot. Only after Gambit is done it is all cut back to +4 Guile (max).

Wow, awesome.

I don't know. Depends on the enemies. Against mobs some AoE spells are surely more effective in terms of overall dps. But is dps a useful metric in a solo run in the first place? The Assassin/Tactician gets +25 accuracy for his attacks from Assassinate (the damage bonuses don't really matter that much - Kaylin even states that Deathblows isn't worth the trouble - but they are a nice addon of course) which stacks with Aware/Intuitive and the arquebus' modal (+20 acc). In Kaylon's case where he uses Dragon's Dowry (which does fire-tagged attacks) you could even add the Ring of Focused Flames for additional +10 acc and the Ring of the Marksman (+5 acc) and Helm of the White Void (+10 acc if Rogue strike ability) or Acina's Tricorn (+5 acc) which is all very efficient in order to take on enemies with high defenses (bosses, buffed up enemies or simply overleveled encounters). The overall acc bonus adds up to +70 or +75 after a while. It doesn't really matter if it takes a bit longer than casting spells imo - since you cannot get attacked anyway - so there's no need to kill multiple enemies asap in one go (other than getting bored, heh). It's also a lot easier to play. But It may be that it's more fun to abuse this mechanic with a Priest of Skaen or a Wizard instead of an Assassin. There's more variety and versatility for sure. Now that I said that: a whole party of vanishers (Rogues, Wizards, Priest of Skaen) mixed with one or more Tacticians could be really fun to use with this mechanic. Even SC Monk (Whispers of the Wind) as well as normal Priests (Withdraw counts as invisibility) could work at some point. As soon as all party members are invisible the Tactician(s) in the party would all become brilliant. Hm, hm, hm...

Btw.: I didn't test this but Brilliant Tactician should also trigger if you can charm or dominate all enemies. The faulty logic is: if there are no enemies, then zero enemies are NOT flanked -> must mean all enemies are flanked -> become brilliant. This might also trigger as soon as all enemies are friendly. But as I said I didn't try it out.

Yeah, it's a powerful interaction for sure. Maybe because lots of players talked about it in the past, now they ran out of things to say about it. The "turn invisible->becoming brilliant" part only works solo btw. - bc. of a logical flaw in the implementation of the "Brilliant Tactician" passive. Here's a cool solo build by @Kaylon from 2019 that uses this very mechanic: Since the mechanic seems to be unintended by the devs it is considered cheesy by some players - and thus I think they are not too enthusiastic to recommend it nowadays. Same thing with Lover's Embrace/Gouging Strike/Brand Enemy in combination with invisibility: you can solo 99% of the game with just those endless DoT attacks: Just apply the bleeding (and/or burning), turn invisible, hide out of sight and wait until the enemy's dead, combat ends, repeat. You can even kill several megabosses like that. It's super effective (even in a party just to take on totally overpowered enemies in order to get certain loot early for example)... but also kind of lame after a while. I suspect the same effect sets in with (solo) Brilliant Tactician and invisibility: it's very repetitive and may feel cheesy, so I guess some players aren't too enthusiastic about it. It is a very powerful combination nonetheless and if you like it then there's nothing to hold you back.

Hi, I'm sorry to hear that you lost your job. I'm also sorry to hear that you encounterd that situation with your party members. It never happened to me (on PC) during thousands of hours of playtime and I also didn't really read about that problem (or maybe I did and forgot about it) - so I'm not sure how to solve this. But I can understand your frustration. Unfortunately the console versions of the game are more buggy than the PC version is. Originally the Pillars game were done for PC exclusively. Only later the publisher (not Obsidian) decided to port the Pillars games to consoles and hired different devs for that task. On PC I could at least give you some console commands to try to fix this, but iirc the X-Box-Version of the game has no in-game console for typing in commands. The game is old though - so if you read about ways how to solve this issue they might still work, no matter if they are 10 years old. The game hasn't changed in the past years - so what worked then might still work now. Maybe it's also a good idea to search in the Paradox forums (they are the ones responsible for the port): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/pillars-of-eternity-console.989/ But I wonder: don't you maybe have some save game from before this happened? I mean it sure is annoying to have to replay parts of the game - but better than not being able to fix the issue at all I assume. Sorry that I cannot be of more help. But I thought I'd answer anyway just to bump the thread.

How: Illusionist +2, Eye of Wael +2, Whitewitch Mask +1

Unfortunately Farcasting does not extend the range of summoning spells. Maybe there are a few summining spells that are implemented differently and which do get extended by Farcasting, but the ones I tried with it in the past (all Druid and Chanter summons, Monk & Priest) did not work with it. Summoning spells have a variaty of ranges, Chanter summons usually have a range of 8m, Lashing Vine (Druid, Gaun) even has 10m. Most Druid summons have 6 and so on.

That is correct. Maybe... in this case because it is so easy to trigger Heating Up at will. On the other hand Assassin also applies to the first cast from stealth - that alone can already turn the tides for you. I think it really depends on what you want to do with your Spellblade. If you want somebody who deals great weapon damage and doesn't want to bother with stealth and invisibility too much then I'd pick Streetfighter. Assassin needs more planning and setup imo. Bloodmage/Soulblade can be very powerful in combination with Citzal's Spirit Lance and Wall of Draining. You can keep all the great buffs (and healing over time) for a long, long time with Wall of Draining (including the +10 max focus on kill the Soulblade gets). Spirit Lance applies raw damage of Soul Annihilation to all enemies in the AoE (not the full number though, that's only for the initial target - still every enemy gets some and that's very good). And of course you have two resource pools that are potentially limitless and lots of great spells to pick from: very versatile combo. Psion is great for pure casters, it's not good for melee characters. I think SC Trickster is pretty cool. Gambit with enough Guile (Devil of Caroc Breastplate adds +2 Guile) has over 100% crit conversion and with any dual wielding setup (includes Tuotilo's Palm) you can use it many times - because the 4 refund is almost guaranteed (if you don't miss or graze). Combined with Wall of Flashing Steel (+10 deflection on crit - that's almost always with Gambit), some deflection gear such as Gipon Prudensco, Casita Samelia's Legacy (maxed Intimidate) or Nomad's Brigandine and Bracers and Cloak of Greater Deflection, also Mirrored Images or Llengrath's Displaced Image as well as Riposte you will have a very sturdy Rogue who still dishes out crazy single target damage with Gambit. And if Guile starts dropping so that Gambit isn't refunding reliably anymore you can use the remaining Guile for hefty spells such as Kalakoth's Freezing Rake. I think that is one of my best liked SC Rogues because you don't have to worry about dropping dead and can still be a deadly Rogue (with spells).

Assassin/Bloodmage is excellent as a debuffer/cc caster. But you need Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure for it to be really great. That's no problem though, you just have to finish Arkemyr's quest line to get one of his grimoires that contains the spell. Or you kill him... The trick is that Brilliant Departure makes you invisible - but that invisibility does not break on your hit rolls UNLESS you (personally) damage somebody directly (this includes Blood Sacrifices bc. you're damaging yourself directly). Walls and summons don't count. So all CC and debuffing spells you cast let you stay invisible and profit from the +25 acc the Assassin provides. This leads to a combo that lets you take on encounters (like bounties or ships for example) that are usually way above your "pay grade" - because you can disable and debuff them rel. easily for your party members. Even pulsing spells like Pull of Eora, Sicken and so on will gain +25 acc for all their pulses because you stay invisible. Wall of Draining can be used to uphold invisibility almost indefinitely. The only thing that breaks it then is your own Blood Sacrifice - when you run out of spells to cast and want to get some back. You can still cause damage with all damaging wall spells and Essential Phantom: cast Concelhaut's Draining Touch and then summon the Phantom. In the meantime you debuff enemies' Will defense into the ground with Miasma (-40) and Dazzling Lights (-10). The Phantom will hit like a truck with Draining Touch (bc. it targets Will instead of Deflection), drain health and apply weakened. And the Draining Touch doesn't disappear on it like it would if you used it yourself. If carry a shield or Kapana Taga or something else with +engagement, the Phantom will also have it. Then it can even dish out powerful disengagement attacks occasionally. Like when you cast Ryngrim's Enervating Terror on the poor enemies and they crawl around, breaking engagement. Since you are invisible it's also pretty safe to use the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry without the need for Rekvu's Fractured Casque. If you don't care about Wall of Draining and other Conjurations too much: this also works very well with an Illusionist instead of a Bloodmage. You can get to +5 Power Levels easily with Illusion spells that way which are great for debuffing. And you can use empower to either gain back some spells or empower an illusion spell out of stealth/insivibility with +10 Power Levels and +25 accuracy (which is bonkers). --- Streetfighter/Bloodmage can be an insane single target damage dealer if you use club+modal in the offhand and use Concelhaut's Draining Touch with the Grimoire switching trick in the main hand. The trick is to NOT learn Draining Touch but cast it from a Grimoire and then switch to a Grimoire that doesn't have the spell. That way the draining touch weapon will stay on you until combat ends. It has insane base damage wich works very well with all the Streetfighter's damage bonuses: Sneak Attack, bonus Sneak Attack when Heating Up (bloodied or flanked), Deathblows, extra crit damage when On the Edge (bloodied and flanked) and so on. The offhand club + modal will reduce enemies' Will by 25 points automatically, Draining Touch in the main hand targets Will: perfect combo. Most draining touch hits will go over 150 damage with auto attacks, you will be lightning fast because of the -50% recovery of Heating Up. This recovery bonus can also be used to cast spells a lot faster. Especially if you combine it with action speed bonuses (Del. Alacrity of Motion etc.). And it's so easy to trigger Heating Up: just spam Blood Sacrifice until you are bloodied. If you want to trigger On the Edge right away, too: fire a blunderbuss with modal. --- So, in my case those are two very dissimilar playstyles even though the class combos don't seem to be so different.

Hi, I don't think there's a mod that does this exact thing (but I could be wrong). You can make Grimoires equippable by anyone with the console. But I don't know if this will give you access to the spells (never tried this). And if it does make the spells accessible I don't think the spells would scale with Power Level (because you will have 0 PL as Wizard). Trickster "spells" are copies of wizard spells that then got altered a bit so they cost Guile. Then they got added as direct character abilities to the Rogue class. They scale with Rogue Power Levels. I think doing a mod for this would be possible - but not trivial.

Uh, it didn't even occur to me that players might look at abilities' tooltips for info. I'm set in my ways...

That shouldn't be the case if you raise Resolve but don't raise INT at the same time (Duality of Mortal Presence (INT)/Turning Wheel). If you re-apply the curse while it's still active (using FF while still cursed) that will also prolong the overall duration of the curse stacks considerably. I've done runs with a Forbidden Fist where it was possible to lower the curse's duration to about 3 secs even with decent INT. So usually high RES etc. works with the FF curse. Also note that Clarity of Agony should work, too and shave of a decent amount of the curse's duration while active. Maybe try that out - to see if the duration is still unaffected. If so it would seem that something is wrong with your game (or a mod).

Do we know for certain what "against enemies with low endurance" means in this Death's Usher case? For Bloody Slaughter for example it's 10% endurance left, not 25% as in Deadfire. I don't know if you checked and already altered that (if needed). 10% would be bad. I like that it scales with level! I cannot say though what will be a good scaling. I think a test run would really show how to balance the scaling properly. Keep in mind that something like +70% dmg additive might not be so much with weapon attacks, but for spells it would be very strong.

@Kaylon was that the reason? Or could there be another problem with Empower + Inner Death in the vanilla game that I might have missed?

Omg how did I forget about Edér? He was even in the testing party (WITH a pet). Too bad Amanita comes so late, a corrosive lash in the mix would be cool and the one element that's missing. Something like Baby Boar near Tikawara isn't hard to get and gives the party a 5% slashing lash for melee weapon attacks - which would add to the lash of Hylea's Talons. Overall +10% slash dmg, nice.

The problem I have with Death Godlike is that I would lose the Horns of the Aurochs. +10% freeze isn't as good as +3 PL (and maybe even +20% dmg on top), but it's very convenient to trigger at will with a Monk - and as human I could also gain some ACC and damage via Fighting Spirit. Maybe I could trigger Lord of the Forest (from Lance of the Midwood Stag) and then switch to Xoti's Lantern before using Inner Death in order to get that 1 Mortification back? But does Lord of the Forest stay if you switch away from the Lance? Don't remember... I guess it's worth losing the +1 Mortification refund if I can gain +2 PL for it. Potion of Ascension would def. work for me though.

Yeah, Recall Agony would be very nice. Inspired Beacon (+40%) and Takedown Combo would also be nice things to add. Also thought about Shattered Vengeance. But they all require separate hit rolls against the enemy. I was looking for dmg boosts (I might have overlooked) which can be applied to the Monk themselves - in order to profit from that Empower + Empowered Strikes combo (+100 bonus ACC) as much as possible. Stuff like Shared Flames and Aefyllath require a separate character, but no additonal hit rolls. This seems to be an advantage when you go against bosses. But yes, Recall Agony would add quite a lot of dmg.