Boeroer

As a Psion you might not want to go into melee at all. Instead pick long-range cones like Killers Froze Stiff and deal damage with Soul Shock, Antipathetic Field or Mind Blades at the lower levels. You can make Her Revenge and The Thunder Rolled work (I would pick one of those, not both - bit of a waste of ability points imo) if you pick a small shield and invest in weapon & shield style. This will make you more sturdy and also a less attractive target for enemies while it doesn't hinder your casting at all. The weapon of a Psion/Troubadour doesn't matter much because he shouldn't be auto-attacking a lot. Instead he should be using Brisk Recitation and then invocation & cipher spells all the time. The weapon can be some sort of stat stick then (like Dagger + modal for added melee deflection or something like the Lance of the Midwood Stag for added Powerlevels or so). Honestly: using summons & charm/dominate is almost always preferable when we speak about the impact on the encounter (not the fun while playing). Psion is not the right pick when you want to use melee weapons and prefer to stay in the front line. In that case a Soulblade would be a good cipher subclass. And maybe even Skald for the chnter side instead of Troubadour. Skald only pays 2 phrases for Her Revenge and the Thunder Rolled (and other offensive low level invocations).

If anybody wonders about the (vanilla) console commands to do this (no mods required): After every <enter> you have to reopen the console. First type iRoll20s <enter> Xoti (Gaun/Helwalker) - pick the Monk/Priest multiclass in game setSubclass Companion_Xoti(Clone) Monk Monk_Helwalker <enter> removeAbility Companion_Xoti(Clone) Sister_Of_The_Reaping_Moon <enter> addAbility Companion_Xoti(Clone) Helwalker <enter> addAbility Companion_Xoti(Clone) Helwalker_passive <enter> Edér (Unbroken/Trickster) - pick the Fighter/Rogue multiclass in game setSubclass Companion_Eder(Clone) Fighter Fighter_Unbroken <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Unbroken <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Unbroken_passive <enter> setSubclass Companion_Eder(Clone) Rogue Rogue_Trickster <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Trickster <enter> removeAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Sneak_Attack <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Sneak_Attack_ArcaneTrickster <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Arkemyrs_Dazzling_Lights_Trickster <enter> Pallegina (Paladin/Berserker) - pick the single class Paladin in game setClassLevel Companion_Pallegina(Clone) Barbarian <current level> false <enter> setSubclass Companion_Pallegina(Clone) Barbarian Barbarian_Berserker <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Berserker <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Carnage <enter> addAbility Companion_Eder(Clone) Frenzy_Berserker <enter> # repeat with other abilities you would have picked at the current level, like Blooded or whatever fits after it's all done type iRoll20s <enter> to disable cheats again.

I just tested an SC Cipher who casts Reaping Knives on an Assassin/Paladin after that guy started a fight with a Gouging Strike from stealth using Lover's Embrace and followed up with Brand Enemy. If you deliver those 3 endless DoTs with that combo to a boss at the start of a fight the Cipher will get ~4.2 focus per sec (on top of his normal focus generation and on top of the additional hits the Assassin/Paladin will do) - for the rest of the fight against that boss - as long as the Assassin/Paladin has Reaping Knives (doesn't matter if they disappear and you recast - the focus gain from DoTs will simply resume then). That is pretty cool in those very long fights in which the usual "Soul-Whip Cipher" sometimes struggles. I guess it pays off to invest the 80 focus then. With 40 secs of Reaping knives you should roughly gain 160 focus that way for a cost of 80. This even partially works against superdefensive enemies like Belranga. Should you miss the Dagger attack - Brand Enemy is an auto-hit. It's then only 5 focus/ 3 secs for the rest of the fight - but better than nothing for a focus-starved cipher. But then one has to ask if the 80 focus for Reaping Knives is worth it and not better spend on something else.

true Whirling Strikes is pretty good, especially with AoE weapons. Iirc you can even trick a mortar into the full attack (use one melee weapon like Keeper of the Flame and Fire in the Hole+Chain Shot in the offhand) which then also works with Driving Flight, doing a ton of attack rolls on everybody around. Twinned Shot (+Driving Flight) is nice if you really want to proc something that has a rel. low chance - like the AoE of Current's Rush or Ondra's Wrath from Watershaper's Focus. Those are fun but expensive - and imo not enough to pick an SC Ranger. Only exception for me is SC Arcane Archer (with Cmmunity Patch that fixes the PEN issues of the imbue shots): up to three Death Rings per shot (initial hit, 1st bounce from Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole, 2nd bounce from Driving Flight) is fun and pretty dang good. It is friendly fire and destroys enemies who are near death. SInce you are triggering up to three instances that destruction happens pretty often because 2 instaces already bring a lot of enemies near death while the third one then destroys them. Too bad SC Ragers can't pick Spirit of Decay...

Cipher's Disintegrate is also very convenient when fighting Hauani O Whe. But I wouldn't say any class is mandatory if you play with a full party. Refreshing resources are very helpful though. I played Psion/Troubadour in a party - and it's one of the most enjoyable, flexible and sustained class combinations I know. The combination of endless charm/dominate with endless summons alone is enough advantage already - and there's so much more in terms of support, crowd control and even damage. So I would second what @theleesaid. Also Xoti as Gaun/Helwalker sounds better to me thematically.

It does cost 3 guile in the vanilla game.

Toxic Strike on a boss in combination with a confused buddy Berserker/Troubadour who uses Many Lives Pass By and Frostfall's Dispersed Suffering is cool I guess.

In the resp. year of release PoE sold +500K copies while Deadfire only sold +100K. I don't know the long term sales numbers though. I only read (mostly Twitter-) messages of Josh and some other devs who reported the break-even point of Deadfire and then somewhat later said that it made a profit in the long run. But one can imagine that it's a big disappointment if a sequel (initially) sells a fifth of the copies of the original game.

I also think that's the main point. Elemental/raw lashes don't trigger any additional Deep Wounds. Also maybe an advatantage of multiple small DoTs compared to singular big ones is related to the Reaping Knives "trick"? Where every tick of a DoT that the wielder of the knives inflicts would generate 5 focus for the summoner of the knives - no matter how little dmg each tick does. Lots of parallel DoTs = lots of 5-focus-ticks.

And this is a point that I can get behind - because you don't need to buy or even experience the game first (--> sale) in order to see something that repels you. Seeing a setting, genre or art style that you don't like will most likely prevent you from buying (--> no sale) and would also prevent you from writing any review about it (--> no bad influence on reviews). Same goes for lack of marketing/flying under the radar bc. of different reasons (unknown IP, too little budget, bad marketing decisions, smaller crowdfunding platform etc.). In order to be able to logically explain the drop of sales one must focus on arguments that take into account that PoE sold well, reviews were good and that similar games with even worse reviews did well, too. Most other reasons brought forth (too much text, graphics, story, bugs, game mechanics whatever) need you to buy or at least play the game and that would not only NOT mean that sales would drop but also that reviews or both PoE and Deadfire would be worse (they are good and ratings by users and critics almost similar). Then several of those reasons would also lead to similar games having bad sales - which did not happen. Also, if those latter points (wall of text, graphics, story, bugs etc.) were the reason for dropping sales then how would one explain that Deadfire did break even and then even made a good profit in the long run? It has a very long tail for a video game these days - but those points above didn't change a bit. So did the potential players all change their mind about those issues at some point? Unlikely... More likely imo that potential players only slowly discovered that game they previously didn't know about. Or potential buyers thought they wouldn't like that game bc. of superfical reasons (such as apparent setting, style etc.) but bought it way later after seeing and hearing more about it and it turned out to be cool. So those are my argumets (again, written down like for the fifth time or so) and I think in terms of logic, probability and simplicity (also see Occam's Razor) they make pretty good sense on their own - while some other arguments need several secodary conditions (e.g. "they didn't buy the game but saw it in streams") to explain why they would lead to a massive sales drop while reviews stay good and sales are slow but didn't stop until the intitially bombed game turned into a profitable one.

This is Matt Hansen's Twitter: He is the (very nice) art director of Obsidian and only recently changed his profile name to the one you can see above. Since I guess that there's no other Eora related project in the works atm I assume that this means Awoved is not dead.

Imo Psion is the best Cipher subclass for solo as long as you have something to occupy the enemies. So summons (Psion/Chanter), mind-control (Cipher itself), invisibility (Wizard, Rogue, Skaen) and hard CC are your friends. I also had very good results with a single class Psion with a very defensive setup with a small shield (no acc loss but higher deflection and reflex) because it shifts focus away from you towards squishier targets (weak charmed/dominated enemies mostly). It is so good to be able to just generate focus all the time while hiding, recovering, kiting and so on. No other cipher can do it. They all have to hit something with weapon or spell which not only is bad for action economy but also is bad against single tough/high defense foes. Also played Psion/Troubadour and the constant stream of resources is so good - you will never run out of things to do, you have summons, mind control, hard-CC, single-target- and AoE damage and defenses/resistances.

The buff of the familiar stays for the whole fight (except the PL bonus) no matter how it disappears afaik.

Written preview: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/08/pentiment-preview-obsidians-historical-religiously-charged-murder-mystery/

On a Paladin I would prefer Half-Mast/BotEP. Marking + Coordinated Attacks is just too good to pass up. Firebrand is good on Barbs, Rogues and Ciphers. Also not bad on Paladins - but they can be more useful with the setup above imo.

No a preview, but an interview with Josh and Hannah:

Doesn't work anyway. Having max RES and stuff as a Paladin/Forbidden Fist helps a lot to make the self damage part quite short though.

Hm... that should mean that a Berserker/Paladin with Slayer's Claw could fry a friendly Troubadour's Many-Lives skeletons (together with real enemies) with his Sacred Immolation and not suffer any self damage from it? A shucks - the confusion would also be suppressed, dammit!

It's a great weapon in the right hands. Imagine how disappointed I was when I slew Firkraag with my self-invented Wizard's Eye cheese at a rel. low level and got Carsomyr which I couldn't use because I had no Paladin... 🤷‍♂️

Tehehe - but wait: does Shadow Fang's DoT stack (like Bleeding Cuts etc.)?

It was a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign and was cobbled together rather haphazardly I think. See Deadfire's ship fights. I liked it nonetheless.

I'm not a fan of Chris Avellone - but I like Durance. Grieving Mother... not so much. Funny thing is - and I will repeat myself the forth time at least (hence the neverending story): if the amount of writing was such a strong repellent then this point would have found its way into reviews of users and critics and be prominent there. Yet the review scores are very good and don't speak about too much text a lot. This doesn't fit. It should at least raise the question whether this explanation makes sense when one applies it to a majority of potential players - or if it rather might be a projection of things one personally didn't like.

It's for weapon attacks only.

Guess it's debatable what's unnecessary fluff and what's enjoyable writing. I did enjoy it immensely the first time I played the game The link to the forum post was there to show you that there's people enjoying reading while playing cRPGs - not to refute the statement that there's a lot of text. You produced a wall of text btw...

Still valid.