Loren Tyr

Exactly what is this 3-second Daze spell that keeps coming up? Because I'm starting to wonder, I've never seen it myself (maybe it's shy?) . And in the same vein, what are these many many single-target wizard spells that BG supposedly had, that PoE doesn't? Because this thread does seem to have a heavy whiff of nostalgia to it, and this seems no exception. Skimming through the first six levels of BG2 spells, there really aren't that many (and conversely, there are plenty of PoE AOE spells that have a fairly small radius, so they're not that far beyond single target anyway). Most of the CC spells were AOE: Grease, Horror, Hold Person/Undead/Monster, Confusion/Chaos, Web, Slow, Stinking Cloud, Sleep. The main exception is the Charm-type spells, which still are in PoE; they just moved to the Cipher. And it's not like there was such a dizzying array of single target damage/destruction spells; not counting useless crap lke Larloch's Minor Drain and the like, we have: Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb, Melf's Acid Arrow, Agannazar's Scorcher, Flame Arrow, Vampiric Touch, Polymorph Other (ish), Flesh to Stone/Disintegrate (which never hit on major targets anyway, so this is close to Minor Drain territory)... and that's it, up to level six. And the levels above that only add a Finger, a Hand, a Fist and Imprisonment. PoE wizards actually have more of these kinds of spells than BG2 did, even without correcting for the smaller number of spells. As for the priests, and the utter tedium of having to run through a whole battery of healing spells all the time... *yawn*. Didn't get any better with temples either until you got enough gold that it didn't matter anymore. It also made Priests beyond boring as a class, because you had to memorize endless healing spells, leaving rather little room for spells to be used in combat. At least IWD2 got rid of that problem (mostly) with the spontaneous casting system, but it was still a chore. The PoE Endurance/Health approach is a vast improvement on this. I also don't see how healing on rest is "the dumbest thing ever" by the way. We're not exactly shooting for realism here (Cthulhu be praised!), it's a hit point system either way; the relevant considerations here are those of gameplay, not of believability.

Well, I do like a puzzle, and bug hunting certainly provides those . Though this one was reasonably straightforward, since I already knew the two OnCrit effects were separate from the regular weapon procs. The indications are that there will indeed be a further update by the way: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88092-psychic-backlash-bug-cipher-use-it-on-himself-at-the-begining-of-battle/?p=1832478. Given the simple fix on this, I can't imagine it'll still be there in 3.04.

There's certainly a good argument for it, I agree. The main downside it would have is that it doesn't stack with other Accuracy buffs, so if you're routinely using those the Gallant Focus gets suppressed (in it's entirety, oddly; if your Barbarian would drink a Eldritch Aim potion, nearby allies don't get the Gallant Focus benefit anymore either). I must say, personally I don't ever seem to get around to picking Accurate Carnage myself (just an early Weapon Focus, I don't like switching between groups anyway), other choices abound. But if I did have that opening, Gallant Focus might indeed be a good alternative to it.

The StunOnCrit and ProneOnCrit effects actually have their own special implementation (not sure why), they aren't like other weapon proc effects in this regard. The ProneOnCrit works as intended, only the StunOnCrit is incorrect. As it turns out, in the StatusEffect.WhenHits function is called, the code for the StunOnCrit passes the wrong DamageInfo (the hit/damage packet) to the ApplyAffliction function that actually does the Stunning part. Before calling this function it first performs a to hit roll (via another function) versus Fortitude. This generates a DamageInfo object, and this is supposed to be passed to ApplyAffliction (this is what indeed happens in the code block for ProneOnCrit). However, the DamageInfo from the original attack is passed to ApplyAffliction instead, which is inherently always a Crit; the base duration is set to 2 seconds, so the Stunned duration will always be 3 x (INT modifier) seconds. The reason the output log does show graze/hit/crit is that the function that generates that output does get passed the correct DamageInfo object. If you hit one of your own characters a bit with the hammer though, you'll see that the 'stunned' symbol next to the character portrait always says 'crit', even if the log didn't. Should be an easy fix though. Just a matter of changing the DamageInfo packet that gets passed to ApplyAffliction to the correct one.

You can switch between one and the other sure, but it isn't the most efficient. A summoning/debuffing chanter doesn't need Might for one thing, so you could opt to go high Int and put the rest in Per and Dex, maybe even dump Might a little. In between invocations, put him to work casting useful buffing/debuffing scrolls and Arbalesting stuff. And as Boeroer says, at higher levels you can add an occasional higher-level phrase without damaging your phrase count too much, especially if you have good Dex to compensate for it on the Invocations. It also feels like a rather more interesting and versatile character than just a lumbering lump passively chanting Dragon Thrashed at people. Though personally I prefer Aesfyllath anyway, seems more useful; and also has the advantage of not needing high Might either.

Indeed, interrupts occur only after a to-hit roll, so DoTs and such like Combusting Wounds or Plague of Insects wouldn't work. Hence Tanglefoot, that does seem to be the best option. Also helps that it targets Reflex and kind of self-debuffs as well; obviously it would call for some ranged attacking to go with it, can't really send in your own guys into that.

Might be funny to get an interrupter Druid going. Pump PER to 20 plus Interrupting Blows for 45 Interrupt, cast two overlapping Tanglefoots (long duration, massive AOE, self-boosting, cheap to cast from scrolls as well), Interrupt everyone for 0.5 seconds every 1.5 seconds. They stop moving every time they get interrupted as well, so between that and the Hobbling they're really going to be crawling

It should do. Peeking at the code, the basic "Compute Interrupt" function just grabs the Perception and adds any Interrupt bonuses to that, anything that does interrupts would call this function. Edit: quick test with some random spells (Chillfog, Rolling Flame, Fan of Flames) shows that indeed it works.

Actually, for a melee chanter (if you want him to do at least *some* damage), dropping Dex too low starts to cut into your melee DPS. Also, that's not the sort of thing you would want to stop doing too much, so the melee recovery will tend to cut into your Invocation onset; ie. you won't be able to invoke as soon as you reached the required number of phrases. Whether the direct damage Invocations can compete with Dragon Thrashed or Aesfyllath, that's certainly in question. Will depend on your might, enemy DR, etc. The Seven Winds packs rather a big punch though (and you tend to hit the close enemies twice as well), as does the raw damage one at level 7. But there's actually just a couple of those, dealing damage is hardly the main focus of the invocations (or the phrases, really). Even if the summons get killed off relatively quickly, they still draw attention away from your own characters, draw enemy spells, and just get in the way. And the higher level ones can certainly absorb and do some damage. Ogres are quite sturdy and pack a punch, Swamp Spore can Dominate all over the place, the animated weapons are reasonably sturdy as well; less endurance than ogres but high DR and better attack speed, and they just stick around longer (I'm still inclined to favour the Ogres, though). And even the lowly level 1 Phantom can mess up some high level casters if it's placed properly and you get a bit lucky with it. The buffing and debuffing spells can be quite useful as well. Buffing tends to be a bit more situational, but for example a fast chanter at higher levels can basically just chain-paralyze a fairly large cone area with the level 2 Invocation. Base duration is 8 seconds, so a 20 INT chanter will get 12 seconds on a hit (and it's against Will rather than Fortitude, which tends to help). Even at level 10, if you use just level 1 phrases you get to four in 11.2 seconds, maybe 3 seconds to cast and recover so you're casting it about every 14-15 seconds. That gets rid of quite a few enemies fairly effectively. Get a bit more duration (or briskier recitation) and you can basically just stand there singing Soft Winds at them (stacked 3 deep that's still base 6 damage per tick, and no DR) until they die (this would be particularly apt on a female Chanter called Lauryn, obviously). This is what I like about the design of the Chanter in particular actually. You have some great high level phrases but these don't automatically supercede the lower level ones, there's a genuine trade-off there. Sticking to lower level phrases to either get to high level invocations or to spam lower level ones is certainly also a viable strategy.

Dexterity and the aggregate attack speed bonus/penalty indeed combine multiplicatively, by the way (different attack speed bonuses are mostly additive with each other; some exceptions, but those aren't directly relevant here). To expand my previous numbers slightly, duration of invocations (casting + recovery) at 3, 10 and 18 Dexterity are approximately: - in mail armour: 5.3, 4.4 and 3.5 seconds - naked: 3.5, 2.9 and 2.2 seconds Spell casting durations aren't quite as well-behaved as attacking durations somehow; the math for normal attacks is very clear, I'm still trying to work out some irregularities I'm finding with the spellcasting times. But from the above numbers you can still make a reasonable approximation, I'd say.

The reason DEX is generally not considered a prime stat for chanters is that it doesn't affect the chanting itself. So you could just sit there a slow, lumbering oaf in the heaviest of armour, and your chanting still goes at the same speed. It's only the invocations (and any non-chanter specific activity, of course) that gets affected by low DEX and slow recovery, which you do less frequently; keep in mind though that you stop chanting when you use an invocation and only start again after the recovery of that has elapsed (scroll casting doesn't interrupt chanting, by the way). So indeed it is very much a matter of what role you want your chanter to play beyond the chant-y part. Melee, ranged, scroll-based magic? And as Reent points out: are you using the longer, more powerful phrases as you get them, or doing lots of short phrases to get many invocations out quickly? I tend to favour the latter approach, in which case longer casting and recovery is going to have relatively more impact. It also helps to time other actions properly; ie. if you know you're going to hit 3 completed phrases soon (or whatever number you need for the desired Invocation), you can hold off doing anything else so you are at least ready to go as soon. To give you an indication, I just did a quick test: at 3 Dexterity an 'average' speed invocation (ie. almost all of them) takes about 5.3 seconds, at 18 Dex this drops to 3.5 (this is the duration of the invocation itself plus recovery). A Dex of 10 came in at about 4.4 seconds. This was in mail armour by the way, so would be a bit faster in lighter gear as well. Anyway, the difference is significant but again depending on what else your chanter is supposed to be doing it isn't nearly as big a factor as for most other classes to have lower Dex. Even on a more hands-off chanter I wouldn't go too much below 10 though since it does still slow everything down and also makes you more likely to be interrupted. In terms of general mechanics by the way: attack speed bonuses/penalties of any kind (including armour) only affect the recovery duration, not the duration of the action (casting, attacking, drinking potion, whatever) itself. Dexterity does affect the action duration directly, as well as recovery. And where applicable, it also speeds up reloading (attack speed effects don't, so you reload just as fast naked as in plate armour; only the reload-speed specific bonuses/penalties affect reload duration).

As an addendum to this: note that the recovery time for War Bow, Rod, Crossbow, Arbalest and all guns is the same. Reload time does differ, but since that can be interrupted at any time that doesn't matter so much for being able to quickly react with an appropriate spell. There are actually just three weapon base recovery duration categories: - short: all 'fast' melee weapons - medium: all other melee weapons, hunting bow, scepter, wand - long: all other ranged weapons The 'medium' duration is 1.5 times that of 'short', and 'long' is 1.5 times the duration of 'medium' (so 2.25 times 'short').

Completely unplayable huh... must've missed that. Maybe I'm just not very observant. Though I did happen to notice that the 3.03 update was released a month ago. Just a though, but maybe try to get your facts straight before you start throwing a hissy fit.

In part. Item-specific bonuses and penalties indeed only apply to attacking with that weapon, so those don't affect anything else including casting (or even attacking with a second weapon). But also not applicable here are "attack-type specific" bonuses, eg. bonuses/penalties to dual-wielding or specifically to "melee attack speed" or "ranged attack speed", those don't apply here either (except for some "ranged attack speed" bonuses/penalties that affect some spells, but those are rare).

Recovery on Chanter Invocations (and spells in general) is affected by general attack speed modifiers and armour, and is a function of the duration of the spell itself. That duration is affected by dexterity, so higher dexterity will speed up both casting and recovery. As far as I know almost all invocations are "Average" speed, so should have the same duration. Not sure whether anyone has actually documented the summon stats anywhere. If not, that would require some digging through the game files to get at.

+X% damage modifiers are indeed additive and graze/crit just count as -/+ 50%, so if you graze with a Fine weapon and have 18 Might, the overall percentage would be 15% + 24% - 50% and you'd end up with a 0.89 multiplier. For duration however, graze/crit is multiplicative with all other modifiers. The latter is generally just Intellect, but if there are others there are added together and then multiplied by graze/crit. For example, if a 12 INT Fighter crits you with Knock Down (base 5s) while you are wearing Belt of the Stelgaer (0.66 Prone duration), you will be down for (1 + 0.1 - 0.34) x 1.5 x 5 = 5.7 seconds. The 0.25 DR is indeed a bit arbitrary, though I suppose they had to pick something. Would perhaps have made more sense to scale it to add up to 1 over the total number of ticks (though that would actually end up higher per tick for short DOTs, of course). It does still does a nice amount of damage though, that's certainly true. Whether you'll outdamage Barbarian Carnage though... it's a bigger area, but the Barbarian is likely to be hitting more often than once every 3 seconds and with more damage per hit and potentially with additional effects on hit. Whether Aefyllath would do more would depend on a number of factors but not necessarily DR. Keep in mind that lashes, including the one bestowed by Aefyllath, are also decreased by 0.25 DR (this is independent of percentage, ie. Flames of Devotion also gets 0.25 DR; adding Intense Flames counts as a second lash, though). Dragon Thrashed will scale with number of enemies, Aefyllath with the number of hits and (pre-DR) weapon/spell damage. So the latter would also start to scale with number of enemies if you're using AOE attacks or spells (or other multi-hit attacks, eg. Driving Flight, beams). Works well with Barbarian Carnage actually; or Chillfog, paradoxically .

There are actually two types of DOT, which work somewhat differently. The most common is the ApplyOnTick type, which has a base value specified per tick in advance. For example, Necrotic Lance inflicts an ApplyOnTick of base 10 Corrode damage per tick for base 5 seconds (plus the additional Corrode damage dealt directly, but that's separate and not relevant here). Duration is modified in the normal way by Intellect, damage per tick is modified in the normal way by might (but not by creature or damage type specific modifiers). Each tick is reduced by 0.25 DR of the relevant type. Crits and grazes only change the duration, not the base damage per tick. There are also ApplyOverTime DOTs, for which the total damage is determined when the effect is first applied (eg. Wounding Shot, Enduring Flames) and this gets divided across the relevant number of ticks. These primarily differ in how the amount of damage per tick is determined, beyond that they are mostly the same (0.25 DR per tick, crit/graze changes duration only). Dragon Thrashed etc. is two ApplyOnTick DOTs of base 10 damage per tick; this would become 12.4 per tick at 18 Might, dealing 10.9 Slash and 10.4 Burn damage per tick against 6 Slashing / 8 Burning DR. Crit/graze again only affects duration, though like intellect this only affects the Linger part. So total duration should be (recitation duration) + (base linger duration) x (INT multiplier) x (graze/crit multiplier). As for the additional questions: damage is computed per tick, so if Might or DR change in between ticks this will affect subsequent ticks; eg. if Might goes from 18 to 20 and DR from 8 to 10, the damage on the next (full) tick will be 10x1.3 - 10/4 = 13 - 2.5 = 10.5. Changing intellect doesn't affect anything though, as the duration of the effect is set when it is initialized.

Well, something's certainly ridiculous here...

The odd thing is, the behaviour seems to be intentional. The ModifiedStat this uses is DamageBasedOnInverseHealth, which is clearly named for and implemented as doing tick damage proportional to the ratio of Health lost, ie. 10 x (1 - current / total Health) Raw damage per tick. The original idea must thus indeed have been to base this on Health rather than Endurance. This should be just a straightforward matter of adding a new ModifiedStat DamageBasedOnInverseStamina and setting the various versions of Infestation of Maggots to use that instead, though. Assuming that the intent would now ineed be to change it to Endurance-based rather than Health-based.

If you want more dialogue options RES in particular is the stat to get. If you're playing on normal you could go for a stat spread like 16/16 MIG/CON (or maybe 18/14), 14/16 INT/RES and 8 in DEX and PER. Naturally the high RES dialogue options tend to be of the rather assertive kind, so those fit a Barbarian quite well in any case. Additional dialogue and interaction options are mostly dependent on primary stats (RES most of all, quite a few with INT/PER as well), skills (in terms of dialogue you should probably get a couple of points, at least 4 I'd say, in every skill; the first few points are cheap to get anyway) and dispositions (these are usually more automatic; differences in responses you get rather than options for you to pick). You do get a few that trigger off of race/culture/background; I would imagine from class as well, though off the top of my head I can only recall ones for the Paladin and Priest kits. Ciphers might have a few of their own as well, but it's not likely to be significantly more than others. You can certainly tankify any character, sure. There's a lot of room for different kinds of builds on any character, there aren't any artificial restrictions on what weapons or armour a specific class can use like there were in BG/IWD for example; you can put your mage in plate armour if you want. This gives a lot of build variety, you can have very effective melee-oriented mages for example, or a sturdy high-deflection rogue. Having said that, this does naturally affect how your character plays, what his role will be. Having your mage run around whacking people with his magic staff is great fun, but obviously he'll have less time (with all the whacking and running around) and less resources ('cause you do need to invest items/spells/abilities in making your mage not die quite so quickly) to do the stereotypical fireball-y mage stuff. It is always a trade-off. And in terms of sheer tankiness, being at the frontline taking hits, classes like Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins are just simply better at it.

Because disabling status effects (and quite a few useful spells) are generally defended by Fortitude, so debuffing that makes those stick much more easily (and disabled enemies get their deflection debuffed anyway). This is also what makes Painful Interdiction such a good debuffer, since it effectively drops Fortitude by 28 points, and Will by 24. This also makes Threatening Presence quite useful. On its own, to give a -12 Fortitude and Will debuff to nearby enemies, works especially nicely if your Barbarian is Carnaging with for example some Prone-inducing weapon; but also as an automatic pre-buff for Painful Interdiction, since it makes it more likely for the Weakened effect (which is itself defended by Fortitude in this case) to hit or crit itself (note that this doesn't stack with the overlapping Sickened effects; a Sickened and Weakened character gets -28 Fortitude, not -40). Having said that, whether Brute Force is worth it is certainly debatable. There are quite a few enemies that have Fortitude well in excess of their Deflection, even if you do give them -12 or -28 Fortitude. It isn't useless though, there are also enemies who have a big gap the other way (Spirits, mostly), or who get Fortitude < Deflection if you at least Sicken them. Against Kith it can be useful against Mages in particular, since it renders all their fancy Deflection buffs entirely moot. So on balance, I would only take it after Threatening Presence, but it can still be nice to have since it's automatic and does help against a subset of enemies; especially if you have a priest routinely casting Painful Interdiction. And it also has nice flavour. If you're really into optimizing it's probably not going to make the cut, but I'd say it does enough to consider taking it otherwise.

My experience playing this kind of Barbarian on Hard difficulty is that you don't need Veteran's Recovery all that quickly (probably not at all, really). Between the enormous endurance pool and the heavy armour and extra DR you just don't really need it, especially with Savage Defiance and Second Wind to get some healing done. I went for Weapon Focus and Two Weapon Fighting first to get some better damage output. Did get Veteran's Recovery and Shod-In-Faith boots later, but having both seems to get rather redundant. Though I might be inclined to put the boots on someone else, it can get a bit annoying having them trigger on every little trash fight. Would be a different story on PotD of course, but since the OP is new to the game I assume he's not starting there. Anyway, in terms of starting stats I went for 20/19/15 for MIG/CON/INT on a Coastal Aumaua, 8 points each for DEX/PER/RES. It does remove some dialogue options, sure. But there are plenty of other ones left, it's not like with low(er) RES you're really forced into specific dialogue trees that don't fit your character or you need to go all brutishly aggressive in your conversations, so that still works fine for a main character.

I don't want to dictate anything. But the OP indicates that he values the role-playing aspect, which means the "making sense" part is certainly relevant. And sure, there is a plethora of reasons why a character might have low constitution; but many of those reasons would also prevent him from being or staying the kind of warrior that fits the Barbarian class. You may consider it cliche, but the class does represent a certain type of character, a certain attitude. And sure, you could come up with a scenario in which it somehow does make sense; just like you could justify a mage who is as dumb as a brick, or a Bleak Walker cuddling every bunny in sight. It's just not likely to come across as particularly believable.

I still maintain that from a roleplaying perspective a low CON barbarian just makes no sense. Though then again I never believed in giving barbarians a shield or having them pike-poking enemies from behind a tank with either. At the end of the day, these are your recklessly aggressive, grind-them-into-pulp style warriors. A defensive style just doesn't suit them. If you want a barbarian tank, go high Might, high Constitution (and high Intellect for the Carnage range), heavy armour, dual-wield some swords (I prefer them over sabres, anyway; base damage is lower, but you get pierce/slash and Whispers of Yenwood early on) and charge in. You get tons of health and endurance and an enormous Fortitude (especially when Frenzying). You also get hit all the time, but that's barely noticable (and works nicely with Binding Rope). Works nicely with Coastal Aumaua to get Towering Physique, though personally I've always been partial to Dwarven Barbarians as well.

It does keep bouncing if you miss, actually. Other things can stop it bouncing though, the most likely being that the current target gets killed by the Mind Blades. It only keeps on bouncing if its most recent victim survived. It can also be stopped by a lack of valid targets in range (although Mind Blades has long bounce range; it doesn't hit anyone twice though). Edit: damage also decreases by 10% for each bounce by the way. This is cumulative, so 90% damage on first bounce, 81% on the second, etc. (this is handled like any other X% damage modifier).