Boeroer

Debonaire or Trickster: different gameplay because usually you'd pick a Trickster for melee combat and a Debonaire for ranged or reach weapons. No particular gear in mind, but Trickster would profit a lot from gear that raises defenses, like Gipon Prudensco, Bracers and Cape of Major Deflection and so on. Using Sasha's Singing Scimitar as main weapon would be a smart choice imo because it allows for a free empower use in every encounter with an invocation which is very cool. Something like empowered "Killers Froze Stuff" and then smack the helpless enemies is good. Can be paired with a second sabre for dual wielding - or pick a shield for more defense. Troubadour/Debonaire could use a weapon with increased crit effect (see stuff like the pistol Scordeo's Trophy or the pike Wicked Beast or the hunting bow Essense Interrupter or so). Pistol + modal (rushed reload) suppresses the reloading bonus of Sure-Handed Ila, so you might as well use two pistols + two weapon style, Sure Handed Ila + Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr chants and Scordeo's Trophy + Eccea's Arcane Blaster. Full guns(l)inger. Troubadour/Streetfigther should maybe get Maia's armor (Sharpshooter's Garb) at some point and use a pet like Cutthroat Cosmo or Abraham, Acina's Tricorn, Ring of the Marksman. As with nearly all Rogues I wouldn't put too much into Might but would prefer DEX, PER and INT. Melee Trickster might want some Resolve, too.

Troubadour/Psion is an excellent combination and can fit the theme imo. The most effective thing is to combine summons (Chanter side) and Mind Control (Cipher side). Basically you can turn a whole army against one single leftover foe. But can cast a ton of other stuff, too. Can sing and cast all day, no need for weapon usage at all (still possible of course, just not needed and not particularly effective). Troubadour/Beguiler is similar but is more roguish. It gets bonus dmg for weapon attacks if the enemy is afflicted and he gains lots of focus if he csts against afflicted enemies (weapon usage not needed to gain focus, but still effective). Troubadour/Debonaire also fits the Scoundrel-Bard theme well imo (and so is Troubadour/Trickster). The Troubadour/Debonaire can almost guarantee critical hits because he can mass-charm with an invocation cone and then get a 100% hit-to-crit conversion on those charmed enemies (nice with weapons and/or abilites which do something special on crit - or in order to circumvent PEN-issues etc.). Troubadour/Priest of Skaen? Little dark, but Preist of Skaen has Rogue elements (like turning invisible). Troubadour/Streetfighter also works very well with an arqubus (especially the Red Hand) if you use your own summoned Wisps (The Lights Danced across the Moor) to distract you. You can stack 50% recovery reduction from Streetfighter with twice the bonus of Sure-Handed Ila (20% reload bonus AND 20% recovery bonus which both apply to reloading weapons). Until getting the Wisps one can use Blunderbusses to trigger the Steetfighter passive.

There's another downside that is more impactful in the later game imo: a Bloodmage (even as multiclass) has no access to Empower and therefore also cannot profit from abilities and items that work with empowering abilities (for example the empowered Missile Salvo + Least Unstable Coil + Wall of Draining combo).

I guess Moon Godlike - which is especially impactful in the first half of the game. Something with a head slot starts to become better later in the game when fights take longer (so you spend more time unshifted and can access the bonuses of the helmet). But since the hardest part of the game usually is the early part I'd say Moon Godlike.

I don't know. If you use them for tanking it's pretty good to have two additonal casts for 2 more phantoms in long fights. The substancial phantom casting stuff is indeed a bit annoying at times (I like Arduous Delay of Motion because it targets Will and stacks with all other debuffs, but Necrotic Lance and Minor Missiles are often just a waste of action time - casting can also break engagement the phantom might have via items which is detrimental to tanking) but if it's used as a tank then bigger health pool doesn't hurt I guess. It would have been very exciting if one could pick the 3 spells for the substancial phantom from your own spell portfolio. The opportunities...

These days I give him Effort and enchant it with Hemorrhaging because that also works with all crits, not only weapon crits. If you add Hylea's Talons you can generate ebven more crits per spellcast (because the DoT on the gloves also does a hit roll that can crit). Even before getting Avenging Storm (which procs on Hemorrhaging hit rolls bc. it originates from the weapon) it's cool to cause hobbled or sickened as additional CC effects on the fly while casting Chillfog, Wicked Briars, Tanglefoot and so on. Later add Avenging Storm and of course Maelstrom and he's wiping ads (which are usually more prone to receiving crits) like few other characters. Venombloom is lso excellent with this because it does 3 attack rolls every 3 secs (loads of chances for crit rolls which all trigger Hemorrhaging which in turn triggers Hylea's Talons and Avenging Storm - which when those crit trigger Hemorrhaging again and so on and so loop). Effort + Taste of the Hunt is also a pretty decent combo during mid levels. The combined DoTs melt tough foes pretty nicely (if you can reliably hit).

I somewhat agree. However, the pl7 phantom has better stats iirc (at least more health). But you confused the names. Essential Phantom is the pl4 summon while Substantial Phantom is pl7.

Yes, you are right. It's only auto-leveling companions before you pick them up - sorry. I forgot about that limitation since I always wanted to level them manually. But since there is the retraining option you can try things out without too much regret.

Besides (pistols in general and) the early game where single weapon usage is really good bc. of the +12 ACC - which is a huge bonus compared to the overall low ACC/defense numbers at that point of the game - I only used One-Handed Style "seriously" with a Monk/Berserker + Stalker's Patience and the "0 recovery on 20% of crits" enchantment. The combination of Swift Flurry/HBD, Blood Thirst and the enchantment made it a lot of fun and the high ACC (+29 from Enduring Dance + single weapon + spear) also made it very viable against high deflection enemies. In most other cases it just feels lackluster. It may have its uses in edge cases - but that's not enough to make it an attractive alternative for most of players who aren't too fixated on the fine details. It not only lacks broad mechanical impact - it also lacks (a) feature(s) that would make it more attractive. Dual wielding and two handers will always have their fans just because of how "cool" they are. Maybe instead of giving increased crit conversion it would have been interesting to focus on the fact that you have a free hand... which could be used for all sorts of stuff during a fight (grabbing the opponent's weapon shaft, throwing random stuff at opponents, grappling, making offending gestures... ;)). Don't know how that would affect combat mechanically though (in a not too complicated fashion)...

I didn't check this ingame now but from the top of my head I see no way to accomplish this with the conditions that are given.

Having played Tekehu with Effort (pun intended) as an SC Druid - which was great - I also tried an Assassin/Bloodmage + Effort, Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and some pulsing CC spells like Binding Web etc. plus Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak and that was even more impressive imo. Especially because if you also bring a Druid with Entropy all hits will get converted to crits on the enemy with Entropy while the "stacks" of entropy won't get removed (bc. no damage, only CC). With this you can perma-stun whole groups of enemies and very tough single enemies in particular. Of course not the MIG-resistant or -immune enemies, but still...

There is automatic leveling iirc. There should be an option in the game settings menu.

I think you meant to post in the Deadfire Stories subforum - this is the Pillars of Eternity (1) Stories subforum.

Yes, and since the items give +3 engagement, the Phantom will have those 3 eng. slots, too - letting it dish out disengagement attacks as well (which target Will instead of deflection because Draining Touch just does that).

Willbreaker! In a party that plays around with terrify I really like to give him a club (+modal) and Cadhu Scalth and use him like a tank. I love to use Miasma with him, put Kapana Taga in the offhand and Reckless Brigandine as armor and then summon Concelhaut's Drainng Touch + a Phantom. I will have 3 engagement slots and deal devastating disengagement attacks against terrified enemies with Draining Touch. Later I like to use The Blackbow (and a phantom with the Blackbow), too. Tekehu is a nice addition. And Cipher is cool (maybe a Psion/something) because lots of their spells target the Will defense. A combination of terrifying some enemies + charming/dominating the rest messes up almost all enemy groups very thoroughly.

It doesn't cause an interrupt on itself. It only removes concentration completely (no matter how many stacks an enemy has). So you need some weapon or ability to actually cause the interrupt. But if you are energized (Their Champion) it can interrupt if it crits - like any other attacks roll that results in a crit.

Yes. Barbaric Retaliation also works with dual mortars.

Never thought about using the spiderlings as source for Adra Ban (because I seldomly have a problem with Adra Ban scarcity) - good point! Wouldn't it be even easier to just bring a potion of invisibility for the guy who triggers the combat and then use a Chanter hireling who sends summon wave after summon wave (like Ancient Instruments of Death) from a hiding place around the rocks (could be the same character)? I don't need more to defeat Belranga - and it always involves a truckload of dead spiderlings in the process because the summons can't realy harm Belranga a lot until a ton of spiderlings died before. It's possible to do rel. early, too.

You will not land crits a lot, so everything that does interrupt on crit is of little use. Thick Grew Their Tongues is good to remove Concentration all at once. It targets Will though so you have to make sure Will gets debuffed. I use a club+modal. You can back it up with either Miasma of Dull-Mindedness or Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment. This drops Will by 45 points which makes it a lot easier for Thick Grew Their Tongues to finally hit. Then use a weapon/ability that doesn't interrupt on crit but on hit or even graze. Don't spam it if you don't have unlimited uses (see Mule Kick, Crippling Strike etc.) but only use it once the Dragon starts to cast something nasty. I however recommend to use weapons/abilites where you don't have to watch your resources, like Force of Anguish (Monk - a Morning Star helps to land this) or even better a crossbow/arbalest with modal turned on. Those modals allow to interrupt or even prone (which is interrupt+knocking over) on hit and it's not too hard to reliably land hits on the dragon. It's best to use two or more characters with crossbow/arbalest + modals and just keep shooting. If you are fast enough, especially with arbalests, the dragon will constantly be on the ground and get interrupted, too. Reliable interrupts at an incredibly fast rate with an arbalest is the main reason why I recommend Troubadour/Arcane Archer so often. Sure-Handed Ila + Gunner makes reloading a breeze, Thick Grew removes concentration, max Arcana + Spearcaster + Marksman and so on leads to insane accuracy and thus you will kock down (and keep it down) alost every enemy very reliably with 0 ressource costs. Add some summons for the enemy to attack instead of your party members. But it also works very well if you give anybody with decent accuracy a crossbow or arbalest and let them shoot. Of course this is not optimized, but you use two or even three party members it's extremely effective against a single boss, too.

What often lets me hesitate when combining Furyshaper with Chanter is the "collision" of summoning abilities. But then... Skald seems to be the best choice imo because a Skald usually doesn't use Chanter summons a lot since they are quite expensive - and at the same time the offensive invocastions (esp. the low level ones) are so cheap.

It still works.

Haha... good question. That was 2 years ago and I'm in my mid forties... :

Found it:

I did a thread or somewhat lenghty post(?) about that stuff some time ago (I guess way over a year ago) that showcased this a bit with evervating blows. This might make CON afflictions nastier than one would expect. They might help you bring down an enemies' HP more quickly because of this behavior. I'll try to find the old post where I did some tests and link it here.

Yes, Stalker's Patience also has the potentially exciting enchantment to skip recovery on 20% of crits. This can also trigger from disengagement attacks. So it can happen that you do a "passive" disengagement attack which might crit and set your current recovery to 0 - so you can strike immediately again. Riposte can do the same - so this actually happens often enough to be fun imo. Add Mob Stance in order to strike immediately after a killing blow and to become faster when engaging more enemies. With Hold the Line, Shield, Unbroken Passive, spear modal and Persistent Distraction you will already have 5 engagement slots even without Guardian Stance. More than that isn't practical imo. I was playing an Unbroken/Streetfighter recently to emphasize on the offense (when surrounded) a bit more and it was a lot better than I thought it would be, even with the seemingly very defensive Gladiator Sword/Bronlar's Phalanx setup I chose. Initially I wanted Devoted/Streetfighter but you can't have sword AND shield proficiency as a Devoted (which sucks) so I went with Unbroken.