klinwen

I wondered similar things myself when I first came here - what class to pick? I didn't want anything too micro, but I also wanted something interesting. Then I learned that your main character is only one sixth of gameplay. Each of your team members contributes equally to combat. This is not a game where your main carries all the battles and the henchmen mop up the blood. You're not playing one character, you're playing an entire party. And you're also equipping an entire party, so even if you play a monk, all that cool loot will find its way to someone who appreciates it, and makes a real difference in combat. Barbarian is useful in many situations, but a bit squishy and you have to keep an eye on yours to get the most out of it. The barbarian needs to be guided to positions where they're not hit, but can hit as many enemies as possible. A barbarian is actually less useful on lower difficulties, because there are fewer enemies per battle. Fighter is a fire-and-forget character. Plonk a fighter down, and then you can focus on controlling the rest of your party. The AI does well with fighters. Paladin is kind of in between - the buff aura of your choice is always active, and you don't get too many special abilities, but the ones you get are quite strong. Plus they make naturally good conversationalists.

And since patch 2.01, Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff and Citzal's Spirit Lance are considered universal weapons, so they will both get +6 accuracy as long as you've picked any weapon focus talent. Doesn't have to be Peasant or Soldier, but picking one of them is a good idea anyway, since you'll be able to use a regular quarterstaff or pike when you're not using the magical ones.

I think those ogres are meant to scare you out of the Endless Paths and back to the main quest for a while. That's why you get frequent fast travel points in the Endless Paths, so you can easily come back later. In fact if you do manage to clear several levels of Endless Paths, when you return to the surface the main quest fights might be too easy for a while. So yeah. This is a game where you sometimes need to choose your fights. Even on Normal difficulty the early game is tough whilst you're still learning things and your characters have few abilities and poor gear. That said, it can be rewarding to win a really challenging fight. On my first go, I was in the same situation, except I had trouble even with the regular ogres. After a few reloads and using up most of my potions and scrolls, I won a fight against 3 ogres, and that felt really great. But I didn't feel like pushing it with the matron, because there's a difference between being tactical and being lucky with the dice on the umpteenth reload.

You'll lose the personal quests of those companions, their banter and quips during exploration, and the comments they sometimes interject into main story conversations. They also have a lot dialogue that fleshes out the world, and some of it is unlocked as you advance through the game. Depends on you whether you consider all this significant or not. If you can handle the management, you can use 4 custom companions and 1 premade, do their quest, then swap for another. But in two cases this isn't possible because the personal quests only advance based on the time those companions spend in your party. And you'd still miss the banter and comments. If you're interested in the story, I'd highly recommend playing on Hard with premade companions and saving the POTD run with custom companions for later. If you want a challenge as well, then don't read these forums for class builds. Or make a compromise and use 4 premade and 1 custom.

Well that's a good point. Darn you and your logic.

+1 for auto-pause on a new ability becoming enabled. Also applies to chanter invocations.

Ways to make a tanky chanter more interesting: - Invest in Lore and use scrolls tactically. You'll want Lore anyway for a talker character. Not a "magic user" in the traditional sense, but not bad either. Scrolls are pretty cheap to make after the first few levels. You might even want to pick up the extra quickslots talent. - Wear equipment with spellbinds. - Don't just stick with one chant, make four and switch frequently based on how the battle is going. - Use many different weapons, pick one for the situation. - You can make an invocation-based chanter by only using first-level phrases. Still not a rapid caster, but at least you'll be able to get multiple invocations out per fight. Having said that, resolve isn't exactly wasted on a back-line caster. You're still going to get hit every now and then. Not getting KOd is good. And unless you're playing POTD, go with whatever stats you like. A wizard with 17 resolve and 11 might is fine even on hard. There are many ways to boost your damage, you don't need to use all of them to get through even the most difficult fights. You can get your resolve up to 20 with either gear or resting bonuses by the time you need to make conversation checks that require 20.

Yeah I got the numbers a bit wrong with who starts with how many points. Listen to Nobear, he's got it right.

I don't think any of the order specific talents make you a noticeably better tank. The Shieldbearer abilities actually give other characters better deflection, so you're actually making someone else a better tank. Unless you use Lay on Hands on yourself, but as a tank you shouldn't need as much healing as someone else, so you're depriving someone else of it. Maybe you could think of it another way? What does a tank do? They stay alive better than anyone else. So pick something that lets your allies benefit from the fact that you're still standing. Darcozzi's Inspiring Liberation is great. Since you're already a paladin, you should resist confusion well, so when someone else gets confused, use Goldpact's Bond of Duty on them. If you take Flames of Devotion, Wayfarer's Sword and Sheperd is nice too. You won't be doing super damage with Flames, but two more mini-heals is nothing to sniff at.

I prefer mechanics on my PC too. But if I had to choose an NPC, I'd probably pick Kana or Aloth. Kana starts with a point in it, and he's a frontliner, and he's naturally along in the place where the most traps are. On the other hand, as a chanter, he's not doing much during combat, so having a high Lore lets him throw scrolls around, and you don't have enough points for both. There's not always room for him in a party either. Being a wizard, Aloth doesn't have much use for Lore, because he's going to be casting his own spells. So you can spend all those points on Mechanics. He's also very versatile and likely to be in your party the whole time. But he doesn't have a point to start with, so he's a little slower with it. Devil of Caroc would be a good choice too. She's near the front line, starts with a point, and is a rogue. You won't get her until much later though. Until then you could hire an adventurer to fill the role of mechanic. You can do that in any inn, including in the first town. It lets you add a custom character to your party. Or just give mechanics to anyone you like, then respec them later. It's only money. Or you could give mechanics to two NPCs to ensure you always have one along.

Oh and playing Darcozzi with Clever and Passionate dispositions? Total hoot. Quick wit, big mouth and gung-ho attitude, total disregard for subtlety or consequences. The Doemenels are a bit annoyed at me.

Got frustrated with trying to create a paladin because they can do so many things but not everything at once. So I took the gordian knot approach and now I'm happily swinging away with both my paladin and Pallegina. My front line consists of my paladin, Pallegina, Kana and a fourth tank, who can be either Sagani's Itumaak, Zahua or Devil of Caroc. Aloth handles the damage from behind them in the form of beating with a big magical stick. The final slot changes around, anyone works really. With zealous focus and zealous endurance combined with Kana's chants, Durance can actually do something other than spam Blessing and Armor. Actually I don't nearly always take him along at all, and haven't noticed any troubles with survivability. I've had great success with these stats: Island Aumaua (was a purely RP choice, but the extra weapon slot turned out to be real handy) Darcozzi Paladini Might: 10 Constitution: 13 Dexterity: 10 Perception: 15 Intelligence: 15 Resolve: 15 This seems to work pretty well for many situations. The fairly high mental stats mean that, with a little boost from items and/or resting, I can handle most conversations the way I like. But they actually seem to work pretty fine in combat too. Having a high perception means I can actually land a hit quite often, even if the low dexterity means slightly lower damage output in very long fights. Might isn't actually super important. If you're not doing a lot of damage to start with, a few points in Might don't make a difference. And with some nice gear, you can do enough damage that doing a bit more with higher Might isn't as important as being able to hit reliably and take punishment. In combat, I mostly use a shield, but I also have a two-hander equipped, and I use Forgemaster's Gloves if extra damage is needed. I'm not tied to one weapon, I don't always use one that falls into my chosen weapon focus, but I change it around based on the situation. One of my slots has Hearth Harvest (hatchet with burn damage and deflection) with a shield in case I need super high deflection. For my paladin, I picked Flames of Devotion, Zealous Focus, Liberating Exhortation and Sworn Enemy. Pallegina has BOTH Flames of Devotion AND Lay on Hands, Zealous Endurance, and Hastening Exhortation, and most of the time wears the Outworn Buckler. I have a few points in Athletics and Survival, but mostly in Mechanics. Whilst some say it's not a good idea to pick on your main, I don't agree. I change my party around a lot based on quests, so if I had just one NPC with Mechanics, I might find myself in a situation where he's chilling at the keep. Also, since the character detecting traps is actually in the front, the detection happens before anyone walks into a fireball. Edited to add back line breaks that the forum wanted to eat for some reason.

Didn't set out to build a priestless party as such, but I seem to be doing just fine without Durance. I'm doing double tank paladins: my main is one and Pallegine the other. The double auras are just super, and they're there right from the start. Kana is the third frontliner. Just starting White March so experimenting with replacing Kana with Zahua. Everyone wears the biggest DR armor I can find and mostly sword and shield, but my main has Forgemaster's Fingers for when you need to burn stuff to the ground. Aloth stands behind them, whacking with Concelhaut's staff and Chitzal's lance. The back line varies. Sagani, Grieving Mother and Hiravias all get their turn. Eder's boring himself witless at the keep. With this setup I'm really running out of health sooner than endurance...

That cipher I started, wasn't really feeling it after all. It was maybe even TOO fiddly. I rerolled a paladin instead. Mostly he just stands there looking handsome and shiny so I have time to focus on my party members. Eder shoves everyone down, then Aloth pulls a frigging giant soul-sucking quarterstaff out of his as...tral pocket and beats everyone senseless with it. I imagine that poker face of his doesn't even twitch. Durance mostly shouts at people from the back row, confusing everyone. I think he even heals by shouting at party members so they stop bleeding out of fear. I LOVE it! You're not playing a character, you're playing the whole party. This also frees up my shiny paladin to have some smooth talking skills. Although I have to say that being passionate mostly leads to jumping at every chance to rescue random maidens, which tends to end in trouble. I love that too.

Thanks one and all for the nice welcome! Feels like I accidentally spawned a great introductory post for any newbie... I think it Nobears post was the most important one for me. I'm too used to the division of having a main character and henchmen. But looks like Pillars is more about full party, like Icewind Dale. I will play with NPCs because why wouldn't I? They make the story all the more interesting. I could never drop an NPC for a custom character, much less solo... tried that with Baldur's Gate, never succeeded, because something was always missing. So I'm going to have my hands full managing the full party so the main character can go lighter. Sounds great! And now I know how to make use of the NPCs too. I still think I'm going to start with the Cipher anyway. Because messing with peoples minds is awesome right? They feel unique to this particular world. Thanks again!

Hey hey! I just found out about Pillars of Eternity, kicking myself for not doing that earlier but very happy nw, trying to figure out how the classes play. Been through all of the Infinity engine games and Neverwinter Nights. I'm looking for a class that's interesting to play. Halp plx. Not the "best" class or the "best" build or whatevs. Im perfectly happy with sticking to normal/hard difficulty and skipping ironman and ultraviolencechallenge thing. Things I like: - A decent number of active abilities to choose from - Being able to adapt to changes in the flow of combat - Having lots of open choices in conversations - Cake Things I dislike: - Perfect execution of a plan (and subsequent reload when the plan fails) - Niche builds based on repeating a single skill or combo - Not having any brains In Neverwinter Nights, the Bard class was perfect for me. A fair selection of spells that are useful when you know when to use them, but still decent with a sword. And great rp options because Charisma. Paladin and Cleric come second, because again with the tactical choices and decent combat as a fallback. Fighters were dumb, and if I really had to play one, I had to make a smart fighter with many active feats like disarm and knockdown so I wasn't reduced to just hitting stuff until it sticks. Monks were okay though. In Shadowrun I liked a mix of combat skills with either Shaman or Decker, because they gave some extra options in combat, and unlocked interesting conversation options outside. Been reading up on Pillars a bit. Fighter seems like a specialised meat sack so probably not picking that. Chanter looks like a Bard but isn't a Bard? Hum. And really having hard time with how attributes should be divided and which ones are important for RP options... would appreciate pointers!