Braven

Posted in wrong forum. Don't see any way to delete (or move) a post... Sorry.

End game, the most powerful ability is the one with brilliance inspiration (available at level 19 for multiclass). It provides power source regeneration every 3 seconds and lasts a really long time, and other buffs too, amounting to increased power level and three stat boosts. Probably will get nerfed eventually since it makes your character invincible. For example, you could just cast lay on hands every 10 seconds or so for complete immunity from death with the shield subclass; maybe use sacred immolation at the same time to passively kill everything around you since you can’t die and still have resource points to spare. Before level 19, you will be relying mostly on summoning and healing yourself. Both of those subclasses should do well. I haven’t tried Beckoner, but it seems like it would be a little better overall for pure summoning. Troubdour is more flexible; you can either do two phrases, faster resummons, or non-summons like that paralyze invocation. At level 19, Troubdour is tecnically better, but who cares... you are already impossible to kill and constantly bursting out massive AOE damage; do you really need summons then? Either can handle the OP invocation.

Lower levels will favor the single class a since you can get the mid-tier fighter defensive abilities faster, but it will eventually even out because of access to rogue-only defensive abilities (adept evasion, persistent distraction, blinding strike) and all the key fighter abilities will eventually be unlocked. Generally, you probably want to spend your off-level ability picks in the fighter tree. The early game will be easy anyways and the first few levels are gained very quickly, so getting those early fighter abilities earlier is not really a big deal. The early game is a lot less punishing than POE1. Currently, the game favors multi-class, in my opinion, from a pure min/max standpoint. Particularly martial classes because quantity is better than quality for power source resources, the fact power level has minimal effects, and access to great full strength tier 0 passives. Most of the core abilities are all accessible in the first few power tiers too and higher level ones tend to cost too much power source compared to the benefits they provide.

Yep, my theorycrafting would agree with you. The resource cost of fighter matters much less at level 19 chanter since you get crazy amounts resource point regeneration. I would go high int with fighter for longer durations, saving some resource points. Technically, all you really need to survive at level 19 is unbending, since when combined with the 100% healing phrase and upgraded version, heals you back 150% of the damage you receive. I guess just maybe higher Con to avoid burst damage while the healing ticks back. Paladin, through more efficent abilities and better defenses, for sure making a smoother difficulty curve and is still plenty powerful late game to make it trivial even if fighter is slightly better then. Also, it is much easier to dump Intelligence with paladin/chanter. They really have zero use for it with kind wayfarer and brisk recitation and the brilliance invocation lasts plenty long without it. Not sure if it affects summon duration...

I am doing devoted/kindwayfarer for my first run (with companions). I went with low intelligence with the idea that I would pretty much just be using charge with fighter for AOE, along with the cleave stance. That saved me points for more perception which I want anyway for finding secrets and traps. Because of the resource costs are so high for fighter, and the passives (after tier 1) are so good, there is no reason to take other abilities and charge/passives get no help from Intelligence and cover the weakness of paladin (get too high threats quickly and AOE). Paladin covers the single target, defenses. and healing with healing FoD and sworn enemy. Between both classes, you get pretty much every single passive defense boost and resistance in the game. Don’t need the fighter ones with all of that and the passives stack with everything, unlike activated abilities. I would prefer a chanter hybrid if going solo, but no reason to when you can hire a single-class chanter with a party for access to brilliance much sooner. One of the campanions can be configured that way. —— My general take-away for martial classes is that multiclass is just always better. The end level abilities are either not very good or just cost too much power source. Some, so much, that it is a headscratcher why you would even think to take them, even as a single class. Martial abilities seem to benefit very little from power level scaling, so being behind doesn’t matter and the best abilities are within the first three power levels anyway, so you are not really behind. Because it is better to get passives (more actives doesn’t help if you just spam the same one anyway), two classes gives way more. Also, you get the full power of the “tier zero” powers, which are very strong (faith/comviction, constant recovery...) and free (doesn’t take an ability pick). Also, of course, you get much higher total “power source points” with multiclass which is a lot better than power level.

Is that chanter invocation the only ability in the game that comes with the "brilliance" inspiration? Additional power source to every member of the party every 3 seconds that can be repeated endlessly without break? Might as well enjoy being immortal and/or spamming cheap abilities like FoD endlessly while that broken mechanic exists. With a party, you only need level 13 with a single-class chanter companion. MC could be something really tanky, like fighter/paladin to breeze to level 13 and then everything is trivial after that.

Don’t want to do the “hit yourself with pychovampiric shield trick with those talents, though”. That is the main reason I have used wild orlan with cipher; to self trigger defiant resolve. I missed that thread and never took the talent since it seemed useless.

Ciphers backlash is unlimited? Wouldn’t that allow a cipher to easily dispatch enemies with a fear aura like dragons with stuns and raw damage?

Both of my Glass Tsunami builds (monk and fighter) use Human as the suggested race. Human works best with low Con, high endurance regeneration, and high intelligence. With high Int, it lasts over 30 seconds which is a long time. Accuracy and damage is always useful, while other racials are only useful for some battles and do nothing in other battles. It is okay if you just momentarily drop under 50%; it will continue if you immediate get healed above the threshold. It is annoying that the UI is not helpful indicating when it is on, but be assured it is working in the background even though there is no icon for it.

Unless you plan to guzzle hundreds of potions, you will need to rest eventually. “Health”, in general, can be thought of as “per rest”. If Binding wounds was per encounter or unlimited use, it would be completely broken since it would render health completely meaningless and provide infinite value. Might as well just have endurance and get rid of the concept of a seperate health pool. High endurance regeneration builds would be crazy good then. Binding wounds provides the best value with high CON (it is just not normally needed since they are not the characters who usually run out of health first or very quickly. I usually only take it if running low CON for this reason).

I understand it feels like wasting a talent taking binding wounds, but it really provides a ton of value. It is basically worth several points of CON (10+). No one complains about +15% damage or +5 deflection talents, but those are worth at best 5 stat points; less than half the value binding wounds provides. With high healing modifiers (like from Survival and Might), it is even a bigger difference. This is why lowering CON is better than other stats; it can be more efficently compensated for with a talent (as long as a smaller endurance pool is not a problem; not usually with high endurance-regeneration strategies.) Potions restore something like 50 health each; maybe 100 or so after healing modifers. Binding wounds however can restore hundreds or thousands of health points depending on stats, equipment, and current level. The potions are good early, but bad late game because of the scaling issue.

2-Handed will be better through the early-mid game; particularly if you want to do decent damage. Shields don’t really shine Until late game and fighters already have great survivalbilty early from naturally high deflection and constant/rapid recovery. Shields perform better late game because the better unique ones are found later and also deflection is better when maxed which is not possible until you level up and able to upgrade your shield’s quality raring. It also takes a lot of talents to really make the defensive style shine and to overcome the accuracy and DR penetration issues shield users have early on. Late game sword/shields can do nearly the same damage as a 2-handers, maybe 10% less, but have much better survivablity. This is because of fighter’s full attack abilities (knock down and charge), higher attack speeds provided by durgan steel, availabilty of speed-enchanted weapons, and because of how higher damage multipliers (which increases for characters over the course of the game) help faster weapons more than slower ones because of how the Damage reduction math works. In other words, bigger weapons are better earlier and small weapons are relatively better in the later portions of the game. My suggestion is to start with a two-handed weapon and switch to sword/shield after getting Durgan Steel in The White March. You then will have access to sone decent shield, including a special soulbound one that is only usable by fighters and barbarians. The two-handed fighting style talent is pretty weak. +15% damage is not nearly as good as it sounds and there are many other, better talents to pick early like rapid recovery, weapon focus, and bonus knock down. So just skip that one all together and take the shield style talent later on, after you start using a shield. Soldier is a good choice for weapon focus. There are a few really good great swords available early and, after switching to shield, you can use a warhammer (there are a few really good one of these too). —————— Here is an example to show why it is best to go all out with deflection boosting, or to not bother boosting it at all; “average deflection” is the worst because each individual point of deflection is not equally beneficial. Each point is more helpful than the one before it. If your defenses are really high and you only get hit 2% of the time, increasing deflection by a single point will reduce this to 1%. You will now only get hit half as often (100% improvement); a huge difference allowing you to survive twice as long as before. However, if your deflection is average and you get hit 50% of the time, increasing deflection by one point leaves you still with a 49% chance of getting hit (2% improvement). This will only allow you to survive a tiny bit longer and is barely noticible. As you can see, deflection gets better and better the farther away from 50/50 you get. Similiarly, it gets worse at a greater rate the lower it is dropped below average. However, the game compensates a lot for this with a myriad of items that provides a large benefit when a character receives critical hits making really low deflection not nearly as bad as it otherwise would be based on the example above.

I always liked the idea of a 3 int wizard using Wizard’s Double since it has no duration and provides a massive deflection buff. While it is pretty easy to avoid hits with deflection, it is harder to avoid hits against fortitude/reflex/will. You basically need to dump one of them in order to focus on the other two defenses. Dumping int and resolve means higher reflex and fortitude defenses to prevent wizards double from popping. Take Bears Fortitude and sword/shield style to help those further along with the dwarf or amuana racial defense. Deflection can be raised to “graze-only” levels without resolve’s deflection contribution, I think. Of course, you need a plan B for encounters with Will attacks, but it could really boost tankiness for the majority of encounters and can be mastered at level 9 to save spell uses.

Blood testament also works with draining.

You can use any armor with the LoP. Sanguine Plate was one of its staples in the early stages but in later versions I only kept it because it's my favorite armor looks-wise. “He who wears scars” is another good option. It has some endurance regeneration and looks like you would expect plate armor to look like (dull gray). White-crest also looks good.

Not sure; I wasn’t wearing them when I checked the math. I can test it next time. I basically did monksterlash for a while after getting Purgatory since I also got the wax at the same time. Though, I used the accuracy guantlets since I don’t like the buggy-ness of the Blood Testament and I wanted more crits. Monksterlash even without the raw lash... is very powerful. After zero recovery and crit bonuses from durgan it was just a slaughterfest. Only danger was getting disabled. In that way, the shield version is better since it will also eventually kill everything but Monksterlash kills things much faster and is more fun since you get more wounds to play with by being less defensive. I just got the Blade of the Endless Path now and retrained for two-handed talent and Adventurer weapon focus. Auto-attack does more damage with the two-hander and with swift action guantlets and swift strikes, it is nearly zero recovery with a robe. At this point I just want to be lazy and not worry about abilities except Swift Strikes and use FoA only if overwhelmed. The stabbing sword animation is a little funny. Feels like the monk should be swinging that big sword around instead of always poking with it. I think overall the purgatory setup is better because the endurance drain is just crazy and the damage is still very high. Slightly lower average DPS than bitter cut (and less than BoTEP), but the endurance drain easily makes up for this and then there is no need to spend a talent for the bittercut corrode boost which is nice since there are more talents I want then I have room for. Using both bittercut and purgatory works well together since one sword worth of healing is really enough. If using a shield, I would put purgatory in one slot and bittercut in the other for slash resistent enemies. Or, that club from twin elms. It is already superb (so no sky dragon eye needed), also has endurance drain, and is in the “ruffian” weapon focus family.

I have confirmed that draining is helped by lashes. It is 20% of all damage including lightning strike, weapon elemental enchant, scion of flame bonus, turning wheel and even torments reach crush lash. This makes Purgatory a top monk weapon given that it has annihilation and endurance drain.

Could go higher con and lower perception, like Boerers stats if health is a concern or you want to prevent knock out injuries. Never was an issue for me since I take the under-appreciated binding wounds talent pretty early. You should never die with that talent unless you are really reckless since it almost doubles your health pool. The weapons look normal unless you enchant them with an elemental lash... then they look a little over the top with the visual effects. If you don’t plan to ever enchant your weapon, I recommend a soul-bound weapon. The Grey Sleeper both looks good and is a great weapon. You can’t enchant soulbounds so you will never feel like you are missing out because you chose aesthetics over DPS. On second thought, Grey Sleeper is a bad idea. It has all kinds of visual effects like summoning vessels (zombies) and shooting giant boulders out of the end of the blade randomly. I think Steadfast might end up being the best, though that is a one-handed sword instead of a two-hander and comes rather late in the game... only soulbound I can think of that does nothing silly and looks normal. Really hard to have a “clean” weapon without losing out on significant DPS by not enchanting it. Wish there was a graphics setting to just turn off the elemental lash visual effects.

I prefer the other, non-soulbound sainted great sword. Ydwen simply does a lot less damage since you can’t give it an elemental enchantment or durgan refine it. Really only good for killing vessel-type enemies... and you don’t need the final upgrade to do that when needed. Tidefall of course is another good option too (probably the best weapon in the game). It provides both the highest damage and tank-ability thanks to wounding and endurance draining. Also looks awesome and also a Great Sword. I recommend looking at the “Lady of Pain” build as it is basically what I think the OP is looking for.

Fighters can be built to be both deal great damage and take a lot of punishment; I actually think a very aggressive playstyle is best for that class. Often people like to build fighters into stupid meat shields hiding behind large shields, but that playstyle is much better with a chanter or paladin in this game. Fighters are designed to swing hard, dispatch enemies fast, and playing defensively just wastes the potential of their best abilities including the constant recovery staple ability. You want to be hurt so constant recovery is always healing you and not being wasted. Mechanically, this is because fighter abilities are all duration and use limited. Basically, fighters are very strong immediately at the start of combat where other classes need to build up by spending time buffing, or gather wounds, focus, etc. They will start to fall behind if a battle drags on, so you want to hit hard and fast with them. Now the stats need to be a little strange to make this work optimally, which is why some people try to play a fighter, think they are weak, and then move on. CON and Resolve would seem like staples, but they are actually the least important stats. You don’t need a large endurance pool or deflection because you will kill off your enemies before they are ever needed. Constant recovery along with other endurance/health booster will keep you standing without those stats. You do need very high intelligence because your abilities are duration limited; Think of this as your warrior training, I guess... street smarts, so to speak. Might: maxed (If given an option, always buff this over others. It helps both damage and self-healing) Con: low Dex: high Per: high. (Critical hits will be key to high damage) Int: high Res: low I recommend either human or coastal aumuana. They both get increases to Might and have good racial passives and fit the character thematically. First take disciplined barage followed later by stalwart defense. With the defense and barage abilities active, your fighting prowess will outshine everyone else until they wear off and hopefully your enemies are pretty much dead by then. Pair this with a big hitting great sword and heavy armor and you will both deal solid damage and can take a beating. My favorite sword which also fits your vision of a fighter is “The Hours of St. Rumbalt”. It is one of the most damaging weapons in the game, if you critically hit, and also will also sometimes knock your enemy to the ground. It is pricy, but if you save up your coins in ACT 1, you can by it at the start of ACT 2. Disciplined barage increases your accuracy by 20 allowing you good chances to get critical hits making this great sword a particularly good fit with a fighter. Just be sure to get weapon focus - soldier and anything else you can to boost accuracy or lower the enemies deflection. Critical hit damage will continue to scale as you progress through the game if you get durgan steel, merciless hand talent faction bonus, and dungeon dweller talent in ACT 3. Along with anihillation that the great sword has, combined, they increase per hit damage by 170% for critical hits. After you get the Charge ability at level 13, you can one-hit-kill a whole line of foes and the Damage output increases dramatically for the Fighter. For talents, I would take “Rapid Recovery” followed by weapon focus soldier, followed by two-handed style. Be sure to take anything that helps your endurance regeneration. This means focus on the “survival” skill and buy the “Cape of the tireless defender” in Defiance Bay. Always Use a piece of equipment with a “healing multiplier” enchantment. One can be found in the wilderness very early in ACT 1. This makes a big difference for the “tankiness” side. The “undying” ability at level 9 can compensate for the low endurance in case the enemies get a lucky streak of attack rolls. You will also want to pick up “Binding wounds” around level 8 to ensure you don’t run out of health in the middle of a long battle, if that becomes an issue. Also, saves having to rest so much.

There seems to be a bug with resonant touch and endurance drain weapons (specifically, I was using Purgatory saber). After I got that ability, the combat log was only showing 1 endurance drained, even though I was hitting for big damage. Before that it was providing 10 times as much. I retrained it away, and the larger endurance drain numbers returned. Also, I didn’t do the math but the endurance drain (without Resonant Touch) seemed much higher than 20% of the non-lash damage. Maybe it was also including the lash damage? I will see if I can figure out the cause later.

That was my experience as well. Kind of the same problem as chanter has/had, particularly before brisk recitation. By the time you are able to cast “Her champion” for the attack speed, the battle is almost over. Part of why I think fighter is better than people often give credit by just looking at the raw numbers is that the fighter buffs are all either instant cast or passive so there is no build up time or any time lost to action recovery in order to buff. Even armored grace is passive and also stacks with things like DoAM potions giving them the best (theoretical) attack speed while also wearing armor heavier than a robe.

I forgot to add that large shield also helps reflex more than the outworn buckler... something easily forgotten. This is because of the sword/shield style you are taking asap as a shield tank also boosts reflex more for larger shields than smaller ones. Considering that a pure tank usually has reflex as the lowest defensive stat (dex being the likely dump stat), this is really helpful. +3/3 more for the most important defensive stats is probably just as useful as the +5/5 for the less important ones. I usually find an already enchanted superb large shield quite a while before getting dragon scales to upgrade the outworn buckler. At that point it is +7/7 vs +5/5 in favor of the large shield. I agree I would always take the buckler for the party benefits alone if playing a paladin, but the large shield is quite nice if only considering the shield holder. Regarding the endurance aura. This is not as helpful as it seems because with super high defenses enemies are already grazing at best making the hit-to-graze rarely come into play late game. It is good early before you get the talents and level bonuses to defenses. The +3 DR is more for reducing prep work since it can also be nearly achieved with cheap ale and does not stack with ale’s bonus. Ale provides +2 DR and is widely available for essentially nothing. Costs like 2 copper, replenishes regularly in stores, and is available right from the start in Gilded Vale. It lasts a really long time so you can just drink it before a tough battle. For run of the mill encounters, enemies are unlikely to exceed min damage with just plate armor providing DR. Of course, auras are good for buffing your other party members, but again, paladin can do that without being the “tank”. And that is my main point here. With an offensive-speced second-line paladin and with monk as the primary tank, the monk gains the benefits of the aura and outworn shield along with his own abilities and can still use a large shield too for the +8 additional deflection and reflex. That is a big deal if going for highest possible defenses. And the paladin can also buff the monk with the abilities that only target allies like the deflection-boosting one and can heal him with lay on hands, etc. ——————— The annoying thing about the liberating ability of paladin is that it is not very helpful cast on yourself. It only pauses currently active afflictions (doesn’t prevent new ones) and you can’t use it when afflicted with the worst ones (stun/prone/paralyze/petrify/charm/domination/confusion) because you are unable to take actions to use the ability. Even the ones it does affect will eventually resume for it’s full duration. Seems better to just use a scroll of immunity or priest spell which solves that major shortfall and affects all characters in the party instead of just a single one. Or reduce the duration instead with chanter phase or monk ability or armor enchantment. It is good for helping a party member in trouble but not very good for helping the paladin personally. All the other ones only target allies, sadly. Again, not helping the paladin “tank better”; just makes him better for support (like priest’s role). ————————- Side note: Fighter has the best overall defenses if you only consider the first 20 seconds or so of each encounter and can be achieved early at level 5. This is because of that stalwart defense ability and naturally high deflection resulting in 20 higher deflection and equal other defenses to an end game paladin. While 20 seconds does not seem long, encounters don’t last as long with a full party and enemy casters unleash thier spells at the start and run out (or are dead) by the time it ends. Usually there is only a couple enemies left by then and it is just clean up time and “other” defenses do not really matter then. The big advantage of high defenses is to negate the first couple enemy spell volleys before you get the battlefield under control. The big downside of fighter is that the fighter’s ability does not stack with spells like circle of protection while the paladin and monk’s passives do because of the way the stacking logic is programmed. This helps them survive better in the toughest fights where you want to stack everything you can.

Did you forget that 3.0 nerfed paladins big time? Faith and Conviction is only +10 deflection / 20 other defenses with both maxed out dispositions AND the deep faith talent. It does a weird decimal-based climb starting at 4 deflection and 8 to defenses and ending at +8/+17. Also, starting deflection is now only 20. So, with all abilities and the paladin only talent, paladins have 30 deflection (starting 20 + 8 F&C +2 deep faith) and +20 defenses (+17 F&C, +3 deep faith) at end of game. Monk can get 33 with duality for deflection, or +18 to other defenses with duality and the crucible of suffering passive ability which stacks (in my experience, this is always active whenever “other defenses” really matters. With high Int it lasts like 30 seconds each time you take a graze. If there is a fear aura (dragons) it is always active). If you want to go all out defensive there is another ability monk has to cut all harmful afflictions in half. With the hide armor that also cuts stun/prone in half, you are effectively immune to the most common afflictions. I never found that ability to be needed, but I am sure it would more than make up for any perceived defensive shortfall. Sure, Duality can only be active for deflection for either deflection or other defenses, and that does help out paladin in battles where both are important all the time (I tend to switch to other defenses when I see a spell being targeted at the monk; it switches instantly with just a short cool down to switch back. It is more micro, but does limit the number of times that downside is a downside). Because you can boost deflection sky high, and most non-spells and knockdown target deflection first with the affliction as a secondary, having high deflection solves both problems and you just switch the modal when you see the icon appear and then switch it back after the spell. Some of the toughest fights only one mode is relevent. The Alpine Dragon, for example only targets fortitude and reflex and will; never deflection. For normal encounters often only deflection is needed, at least after you knock the possible caster prone. I would call the defense bonuses a “small advantage” in the best case for paladin situations; certainly not a “huge one” because of the version 3.0 nerfs. Monks Force of Anquish easily makes up for this as far as “tanking” goes, not to mention Iron Wheel for massive Damage reduction potential. Having high defenses doesn’t help if enemies just run past you so a hard disable is really handy. Also, the small edge in other defenses from the Deep Faith talent is not relevent most of the game simply because of all the other (in my opinion, better) defensive talents anyone can take. I normally don’t take it until level 14 or 16 making it not relevant for most of the game. Monk has everything they need by level 7 for defenses. The extra talent monk gains by not taking deep faith could be used for something like snakes reflexes to boost a single defense by 10. That is only 1 less than the combined defense bonuses of deep faith’s 2+3+3+3. There are more defensive talents than you have probably have room to take, so is it really fair to add deep faith into the comparison? While monk does not have access to the early buckler, you can take a large shield instead. Even with the accuracy penatly, monk DPS will be higher and has +5 better base accuracy to cushion the blow. Basically you trade +5 net fort/will gain for +3 net deflection/reflex. Seems pretty equal to me considering deflection is the most important defense (particularly in early/mid game) and a “tank” likely has low stats that contribute to reflex since dex/per are the lowest priorities for helping defense. Yes, the shield helps party defenses, but the point I am making is that the monk is personally “tougher” than paladin. I agree that paladin is a great party support “leader” type role, similiar to a priest in that regard but with per encounter instead of per rest abilities. Later on , I find the graze-to-reflect shield is more effective than the buckler to keep the party safe anyways. In many encounters in The White March, just walk the monk ahead fully buffed and watch the enemy group paralze and kill themselves without you having to do anything. Monk is better with this tactic because the siul mirror ability makes this even more effective. In conclusion, Paladin can have a bit better “other” defenses, but it isn’t “way better” and looking at the whole picture, those advantages are pretty negligible for contributing to the overall objective of survivability and traditional tanking. Paladin used to be awesome as the ultimate tank, but the nerfs hit a little too hard (while monk has not been nerfed at all). I do think they are good as a priest-like character with good defenses that help make thier party stronger with buffing and healing, and I find paladin fun to play. I just feel like the “way better” defenses is overblown and that posters are forgetting about the nerfs with numbers being posted. (And the wiki is outdated if you look there)

When it comes to best defensive class and tank, I think Monk outshines paladin. Monk can have really high passive defenses too, and has higher potential passive deflection than a paladin. FoA ability is both powerful for survivability and also getting enemies off of your weaker party members (tanking) and can be used several times in an encounter for tough fights. Paladins meanwhile have no real “taunt/tanking” powers. They can heal someone a couple times, but that does not really solve the problem of the enemy mauling your glass cannon companions. A long diration prone basically takes the attacker out of the fight preventing further health loss so healing is not needed. Also, monks can be very effective tanks with light armor which helps a lot since the AI targets low DR as a high priority. Paladin can have slightly higher “other defenses”, but monk comes close (only 2 off) and Can have higher passive deflection, more health, and DR. I think paladin is better when focusing on the party support abilities. For that reason, I recommend high INT because paladin has a lot of duration based abilities and the auras need it to be decent sized. For the dispositions, they are pretty equally distributed if you know where to look. Also, some have more “impact” than others. I actually find the “evil” paladin the easiest to raise. Aggressive and cruelty are available early if you focus on being a total jerk. Also there are two story plots that raise stats for the main character which raise and require cruelity (and none for the other ones). If you want these without penatly you need to take either the evil paladin one, or goldpact. The others don’t like “cruel”. Not sure why the developers only put in special talents for evil characters and none for good ones. Makes me a little sad. For a couple quick cruelity points, kill everyone in the caravan during the prologue and than brag about killing your initial companion to her sister in Gilded Vale. Someone at Obsidian is a sick, sick person to have thought that plot line up.