Boeroer

I guess that nobody finds this as awesome as I do?

Sometimes the encounter starts slightly before the shot falls. Then you'll only have one use left. It has to start after the shot falls. It's best to use an arbalest since it's range is longer. And maybe high DEX helps too. The shorter the animation the bigger the chance that the shot falls before encounter starts. Same thing with all per-encounter-abilities that you can use out of combat: Tactical Meld, Tenious Grasp, Wounding Shot and so on. I used this with two paladins and tried to start encounter with two FoD shots at the same time. If they have the same weapon type and the same DEX and you Pause while giving commands even that works.

I just found ot that all the "Missile" scrolls work with Penetrating Shot (not a big surprise, they are called missiles for a reason) - but even better: they also work with Driving Flight! This turns all your Missile Scrolls into AoE spells. Concussive Missiles is very cool: they explode on impact, doing AoE damage, and continue to fly and explode another time for even more AoE damage. Bounding missiles bounce around like hell. This is - who guessed it - totally awesome with a Ring of Searing Flames or another source of Combusting Wounds: with Missile Barrage (=9 projectiles) you don't only cause 9*5 = 45 extra burn damage to one target from combusting wounds - you cause two targets to suffer 45 burn damage! Whooha! Stunning Shots don't work with this by the way.

Maybe I was lucky - I didn't experience this at all.

If you "console" them with the name gaintlets_of_swift_action, then you'll get the ones that do +15% attack speed. They have a missing enchantment description in the tooltip though - maybe they took them out of the game. I never found them since 1.05 or so. The other ones I also never found. Keep in mind that I accumulated over 1500 hours of gameplay...

Please don't deprive Deprive the Unworthy of this cool feature and don't damp Arcane Dampener! This thing actually makes them worthwhile in the first place. Maybe you could just tweak the duration of both and nerf the autohit of Deprive the Unworthy (there's a bug report for that). That would make them still very useful but not so "overpowered" like it's now.

^ Dammit!

Do you have a druid in your party? With Persistence and all his DoT spells he can stack a ridiculous amount of DoT effects by himself. Well... he won't hit a lot with the bow I think. Recall Agony is a really good point. The damage output of CW alone will get doubled (even if the damage from Recall Agony itself would be tiny) if you combine it with DoT effects. Man... now I really want to try a new cipher build with a wounding weapon. Will this never end?

Firebrand + 20 might + FoD + Intense Flames + Savage Attack + Two Handed Style + Apprentice's Sneak Attack + Scion of Flame + Vulnerable Attack + Ryona's Vambraces = monster burn damage from hell. I think it's 29-44 * 2.55 * 1.2 + 8 = 96-143 for a normal hit and 184-278 for a crit (Firebrand is annihilating). Now substract burn-DR. These aren't exact or tested numbers. But it should be around that value. Too bad FoD has only 2 uses per encounter (3 if you start encounter with FoD from stealth).

Rogue = maxed mechanics. That's all there is to know.

It strenghtens your deflection, your will denfense and your concentration. Deflection is good for not being hit - concentration is good IF you get hit: it prevents that you get interrupted, e.g. while you are casting Lay on Hands on yourself or an ally. Will is imporatant if you don't want to get mind controlled or terrified (or whatever affliction targets your will) by enemies. If your Paladin is the main character (and only then!) his resolve also influences what answers he can give in conversations with npcs. Some answers you can only choose if your resolve is high enough - some others if your perception or your intelligence or might is high enough. There are lots of cases in which resolve matters in conversations. It opens up other paths through the dialogue tree. That's all I think. This hasn't anything to do with paladins though. It all apllies to every class. There's nothing special about the realtionship between paladins and resolve. However - from a roleplaying perspective one might think that paladins should have high resolve.

I don't like that for a "real" playthrough. Somewhat destroys my motivation. Don't know why...

Ok, just tested: Arcane Dampener and Deprive the Unworthy both remove immunities to afflictions: Immunities to damage types won't get removed though. Works with the Ring (Arcane Dampener) as well as the wizard spell and the paladin ability. It's like before the patch if you cast this on a dragon. This makes my life much easier since I don't like to build pure tanks. This way the good old repulsing seal trick still works.

Ok, I did a test against the sky dragon... And this: Says it all. I didn't manage to land a terrify on him because my chanter was stunned so often that his phrase-counter stayed at 3... grrr. What doesn't work: immunities to damage types (corrode e.g.) don't get removed. Repulsing Seal works just fine - like before. You just need the Ring or a wizard or a paladin now. By the way: Deprive the Unworthy is still a auto hit without ACC check or whatever.

Yeah, it's really nice. +33% Damage output with FoD. Doesn't work always - sometimes the encounter starts with your animation, not when the shot falls - but most of the time it works.

Easy way to get the achievement, right?

For me CON would be ok at 8, but I would lower RES a bit and put it in DEX (if it's you main char). High PER is good - paladins only have mediocre ACC. Also, for a DPS-Paladin, I also like to go for Island Aumau + Arms Bearer + Quick switch + Intense Flames + 3 arquebuses + burning lash + Weapon Focus Soldier + Scion of Flame + Forgemaster's Gloves. Then I add some Stealth. That way you can open the fight with a FoD-shot (for more than +100% burn damage, which is alot), then the encounter starts and you will still have 2 uses of FoD for the other two arquebuses. Then you switch to a Great Sword. If you need extra dps in tough fights, cast Firebrand. The low INT is not so good for that, but it's just a backup option, so...

You're welcome!

It strongly depends what you want to do with your paladin. Stealth: If you want to use your Paladin as a quick switching Alpha-Striker with Flames-of-Devotion-shots from two or three guns, then I would recommend high Stealth (up to 8 maybe). Because: if you open the encounter from stealth with a FoD-shot, encounter will start AFTER the shot falls and you will still have two uses of FoD - which makes 3 uses for one fight. That can be quite important if you put all your effort in maxing out FoD damage. Athletics: don't need to be higher than 3 or 4, so don't waste too many points on that. You can go higher if you want to unlock Athletic-related dialogue- and scripted-sequence-options. Maybe in this case you need 5 or 6 (maybe somebody else knows better). Lore is useful up to a value of 10 (or 8 if you have an item that gives +2 Lore - there are some). With 10 Lore you can use all scrolls there are. The dialogue options you get from high Lore stop at lower values - I think 6 but I'm not sure. In my opinion nobody needs more than 10 Lore. Mechanics: I you want your paladin to be that traps and secrets guy, then you have to max this. There will be no room for other skills. If not - skip it entirely. Survival: If you want to use consumables a lot (they are very powerful, but some people don't like the kerfuffle) then it's a great skill. If you don't want to use consumables, skip it. I recommend 8 or so. I usually go for 8 (or 10) Lore, 8 Survival, 4 Athletics and the rest I put in Stealth. That's for a "normal" paladin who doesn't do anything with traps and locks of course.

It's not truly random - they place these items based on the ingame date. So on the third day of a month a chest will contain item X, on the fourth day item Y and so on. There's a spreadsheet for that. Although it didn't work for me. Or did they chance the way "random" items are distributed?

So right. Priest's Crowns of the Faithful & Barb = big love. Not only this buff is great for barbs (like limaxophobiacq pointed out - and it truly is). But also Painful Interdiction + Threatening Presence + Brute Force is a great combo. Throw an invocation-based chanter with the lvl-1-concentration-phrase plus the lvl-2-frightening-phrase (or use Devine Terror) into the mix - who also uses the terrify-invocation. He will smash the concentration of foes on the ground while debuffing their ACC which helps staying alive enormously. People often prefer things like stun/paralyze and so on - but forget that these things do not last very long. Constant Sickened (barb), Frightened (chanter) and occasional Weakened (priest) and Terrified (chanter) are very strong, long lasting debuffs that help your offense AND defense and make your barb a true AoE interrupt monster. Now give your barb maxed DEX and INT and put on a Ring of Overseeing, the Dunryd Demon, one of the long-interrupt-but-average-speed weapons (the Vile Loner's Lance is truly great since it has 1 sec interrupt, inherent +5 ACC AND causes -5 defenses on hit with carnace, that's like +10 ACC to all your hits). These three buddies rule the battelfield. The huge AoE power-interrupts will stunlock every mobster around the barb, the others can just walk around and finish them off. You can add a glass cannon rogue or ranger with max damage per hit to clip them all one by one while they jerk around. It's fun and low micro. And your rogue will not collapse every 5 seconds like he used to. Maybe you guessed it: I totally love barbs. :D You can build them in so many ways and they have such great synergies with other classes. Maybe I will once do a [PARTY BUILD] instead of a [CLASS BUILD].

Try an interrupt build with either Shatterstar or the Vile Loner's Lance. Both have a huge interrupt bonus (1 sec instead of 0.5) that's kind of secret since it's not a listed enchantment. If you add a small shield, put on a not-too-thick armor and enchant these three with durgan steel. Take Interrupting Blows and use Frenzy and Yell/Shout and it's awesome. Both weapons you can get early, and you don't need superhigh carnage-ACC for a solid interrupt rate. The shield adds survivability. It's true: barbs are bad at the beginning and are item dependent. But they are so much fun later on.

If all immunities can be damped with Arcane Dampener, then "Hello again Repulsing Seal, where have you bee... whohaa" says the dragon.

Update: I'm too tired to test that today. Will go to sleep now...

It's a known bug. While retraining, the game won't remove the bonus from Transcendent Suffering. It will get applied over and over again every time you retrain. You could build a monk that kills everything with one hit that way. The bug is filed and will be fixed. You just have to wait. The only way to bring him to lvl 12 would be the usage of the console: open console type "iRoll20s" type "addExperienceToLevel 12" You will lose all steam achievements of that savegame id you type in the iRoll20s thing though.