Loren Tyr

Not sure how the OP got the health thing, because it really is a <50% endurance trigger, as per the ability's description.

No, engagement range of reach weapons is the same as regular melee weapons. They originally did have longer engagement, but that got kinda weird with enemies running past within reach distance getting hit with disengagement attacks rather too easily, so they changed it.

A pity about the push effects, though they can still be useful to push enemies that got past your fighter back into engagement range. Assuming the fighter re-engages quickly enough they'll either stick there again or trigger another Overbearing Guard attack. I agree it would be more of a controller type. The engagement hoarder + Overbearing Guard seems like an interesting direction to take it in, I think; the main think would obviously be soaking up engagement and tying a lot of melee enemies, the Overbearing Guard just makes him extra sticky. Especially if, as I'm assuming, when they are proned they're still close enough that the fighter re-engages them. In that case they can't just disengage and take the hit to go after your squishies anymore, unless the fighter actually misses (quite unlikely when dual wielding fast weapons). Would have to test that though, but I would think that that would have been the intention of the developers. Seems like fun to try this on a future playthrough, though probably with a hireling. I'd probably like more PER and INT than Edér has to offer, and my protagonists tend to be more glassy and cannon-shaped. I might finally try me a pike barbarian, with Tall Grass it'll be a slapstick fest of people falling down and getting up again!

@Elric: I wouldn't say Sword & Shield is optimal, actually. There are certainly good arguments for it, but I would say the whole point of a melee mage is that he actually wants to do more than just sling spells. He wants to physically hit things! Given that wizards aren't inherently blessed with great skill in that area, he might prefer investment in a more offensive weapon setup (when not using Staff or Lance; something from the Peasant family would be a logical choice, one-handed spear has something rather pleasing about it I think) and more offensive talents. For casting spells you probably wouldn't want to go beyond small shields anyway, since the shield accuracy penalty affects spells as well. In any case, I wholeheartedly second Karkarov's sentiment that you should go with what looks fun to you; there's invariably going to be a way to make it effective. Go with a Wizard in full plate armour if you want... going off the beating path a bit is where you tend to find the most interesting stuff (or deadly, deadly spiders; but mostly interesting stuff).

Well, maybe you could turn him into a kind of engagement sponge, give him a bunch of additional engagement slots through talents/weapons and have him be the resident punching bag. Maybe invest more in PER and INT, rather than Might, have him dual wield to get an additional bite at knocking enemies out (assuming Disengagement = full attack, but I would think so; or maybe go one-handed, for extra accuracy and much added flair) and keeping them knocked out longer. Add some prone-inducing weapons as well, perhaps. Not sure how often you would get disengaged, but I'd see it more as a dual strategy: either they do disengage and get knocked out for their trouble; or they don't and you have a tight cluster of enemies trying to hit your sturdy fighter for all your other characters to aim at. Putting a barbarian with Tall Grass behind him would obviously be good for that; would probably a juicy target to break engagement for as well. And if Push indeed reliably triggers it as well, having a Druid cast some Winter Wind to blow everyone away would be quite funny as well. Anyway, maybe it wouldn't be the most optimal build, but to me that just makes it all the more fun to get it to work nicely.

I tried it out on dear Justiciar Aldemar, for Fortitude he has 34 base, 20 when Sickened, and 6 when Weakened or Weakened + Sickened. So it indeed does not stack anymore, just 14 or 28 off. Didn't look at Will, but no reason to assume that's any different. By the way, is there an easy way to get a read-out of an enemy's stats? I got these by applying Withering Strike and/or (a nearby) Fetid Caress which happen to attack Fortitude anyway, so I could just see the changed Fortitude values immediately, but since I didn't attack Will or Reflex those were still question marks. Is there a console command to make those immediately visible, or is it just a matter of attacking Will and Reflex as well?

Rogue can use it! Just... not very well. Maybe to swat away flies?

That might be it, then. They don't stack (see attached). Though I think it isn't actually a nerf as such but more of a fix, since I can't imagine they were ever intended to stack in the first place; after all they are both penalties to the same stat. I still think Brute Force can be useful though. Then again I like flavourful talents more than I like 100% optimized builds, so that may be a difference in play style.

More of the same but even better, would be the short version . But to give my €0.02 on some of the above suggestions: - Talent design seems quite good as it is (though I want new and exciting additions, of course); no talent (or spell, for that matter) should be complete trash but they hardly need to be equally useful either. Personally, I like flavourful talents that maybe are more situational and less generally useful than others, but are quite satisfying to weave into your character effectively. Suboptimal isn't the same as thrash, after all. - Please stick to 6 party members, feels like a good number; people can always take fewer if they want to, anyway. - Please don't waste too much time on graphical gloss; the game looks fine as is, and I'll take more & better content over better graphics any day - Not a fan of re-statting the NPCs, I think getting to choose their level progression is enough. - I would also keep the per rest abilities and spells. I do like the idea of giving (some of) the per encounter abilities a (slow) cooldown. Gives an additional way of balancing abilities. I also don't quite see how per rest abilities would be "immersion breaking" because you have to leave a dungeon to reinstate them; the whole point of those is that you can't use them as often and thus have to be more considerate of when you use them. - Please no natural health regeneration, that's what resting is for. - Yes to separate neck(lace) and cloak slots Some other thoughts: - Make (setting) traps more useful - Add some kind of wizard kits/specialization. I always liked the idea of the D&D specialist wizards but it never really came off in the IE games. It would be nice to have real benefits (and drawbacks!) to specializing in certain kinds of magic; not just in a generic +/- accuracy to certain spells or something, but such that playing as different types of mage has a different feel and play style to it (eg. access to certain unique spells, abilities, but at the expense of actually having to focus mostly on your specialization). - I'd like to see the personality/dispositions have more of a general influence, for all the classes. - Add Arcanum-style odd-ball character backgrounds/personality traits you pick at character creation (or maybe also gain during gameplay, based on the dispositions you build up), that give unique bonuses and penalties. - Bring back Edér as an NPC. Somehow. - Give the pets a small influence on the game (I would love to see the little white wurm blow tiny fireballs at the enemy) But most of all, just make it a good game. Again. 'Cause the world can never have too many good isomorphic RPGs

But they don't stack (as one would expect, given the stacking rules) on my own characters. Are the stacking rules different for enemies (seems counter-intuitive) or on PotD (I only play on Hard)?

Ah yes, because the only reason anyone could possibly have to use Threatening Presence or Painful Interdiction (or to debuff Fortitude in general) would be to enable Brute Force... Not saying it's a great talent, but it does have its uses.

But Sickened and Weakened don't stack though, right? Or rather, their debuff effects (insofar as they affect the same stats) don't. Obviously it'd still be useful for this to have both of them because Painful Interdiction is only temporary, but when they are both in effect I would think you'd still only get a total of 28 point Fortitude and 24 point Will debuff.

As the thread has popped up anyway, just wanted to point out: effectively Fortitude and Will are thus reduced by 14, not 10. And of course 28 for Weakened, so if you have a Priest with Painful Interdiction it might be worth (especially against Kith, I suspect).

But why would you want to? Even if a new player would eventually want to try out PotD at all (which isn't a given), why is it better if (s)he gets there more quickly? Especially when, as you say, it requires game knowledge a new player inherently does not yet possess.

True. Which makes for a good argument against blindly grabbing things, I suppose . I would argue new players shouldn't follow the build list anyway, try stuff out for themselves first, but maybe that's just me.

Fair enough, if something doesn't fit your play style then by all means don't use it. But I don't quite see how that equates to good general advice for new players. Sure, a mage permanently cowering behind the rest of the party flinging spells and shooting guns is perfectly viable. But so is a blast mage, and so is a melee mage. And even when your mage doesn't feel a pressing need to engage in melee, they still can benefit greatly from getting close to the action to use short range spells like Fan of Flames or Ray of Fire (which you are flatly advising people not to use). Takes a bit more care and manoeuvring perhaps, exposes your mage to a bit more danger, but those spells deal a lot of damage as well. So why not build a pyromaniac mage flamethrowering his way across the battle field, occasionally get squished by his own ball of rolling flame? There are a lot of different ways in which you can go about building (viable) characters in this game, wizards included, and advising new players to stick to just a single narrow build type is doing them a disservice.

But if you're going the blast mage route, you'd still benefit particularly from WF: Noble. You still need to hit stuff first to blast properly after all, and Wizards are hardly blessed with an innate sense of accuracy.

As opposed to a recursive cascade of Blasts themselves causing Blasts, you mean? :-D Though it's probably for the same reason: the Blast *itself* is automatic, a part of the initial Rod/Wand/Scepter attack that always happens. That by itself would prevent recursive Blasting, they probably didn't need to specifically prevent it in the code. Though of course the Minor Blights do get you a Blast of Blasts type attack because then the 'implement' itself has a radius; or have they fixed that in a recent patch now?

I suspect that the difference might be that the Dominate, crit Stun or Prone and Envenomed Strike are all triggered additional attacks. The Disorienting on the other hand is automatic (right?), it's just a property of the initial attack (like Lashes, which don't carry over to Blasts either). Attached by the way also a screenshot of my Envenomed Blast (just because I like saying Envenomed Blast ) )

Old(ish) thread I know, but it seemed relevant to anyone interested in blastmaging: I was toying around with it a bit, and (like the Soulbound Scepter dominate effect) it turns out Blast also works with Envenomed Strike. So if the enemy has the decency to bunch up a bit for you to aim at, now you get to poison everyone at once!

Note that with regard to retraining the companions, you can also turn off 'Auto Level Companions' under the difficulty options. In that case they start at level 1 when they join you but with enough XP to level up to your current level, so you can make all the leveling choices yourself as they join your party. Saves having to pay for retraining them (and having to go to an inn/merchant to do so). And though you indeed don't *need* a rogue (though they do get a +2 bonus to mechanics), they are a lot of fun to play! You need decent mechanics to spot hidden objects as well by the way, it's rather a multi-purpose skill.

It looks strange for me that 2nd level creature (a spider) has so big DR bypass and it is not documented. Can a spider bite through heavy armor Isn't it a bug?. The bestiary states that Spear Spiders ignore DR. Read it. The adult sizes ones are the same size as wolves with a spider carapace and Estoc like legs. Make sense to me. In the early game lvls 1-5 or so I always CC them. Where does it say that? I don't see it in the entry for the Spear Spider itself. It does describe it in the general Spider entry, "... its piercing legs [...] can inflict terrible wounds, even through armor", but that's easy to overlook (and isn't specific about DR or DR reductions). Mind you, as far as I'm concerned that's fine this way, the game doesn't need to spell everything out of course.

It isn't that strange I'd say, the bestiary only includes the more general stats on each creature. That's not specific to the spiders. Besides, you found out easily enough, right? In the spiders' defense, I don't think they're necessarily biting you. They're piercing you with their leg parts! They're *spear* spiders after all (those are the ones with the highest DR reduction early on, anyway).

It's somewhat situational sure, but like I said it's not actually that hard to use it reliably. And I'd hardly call 150% extra damage 'slightly higher'. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best talent you could pick, I'm merely pointing out that in the present game it's certainly improved enough that some good clean backstabbin' fun can be had (whereas before the individual stealth it really was a waste). Though it certainly will be interesting to see how the rogue tweaks will affect it (if at all). It's two attacks rather than duration by the way. You get the second backstab even with a crossbow, reload time and all.

As an addendum, for anyone wondering whether to use Backstab: it turns out it still triggers if you are already visible, as long as you initiated the attack when you were still stealthed. In other words, even if you don't have high enough stealth skill to completely close the distance to a particular enemy, you can still get a backstab. Note that in this case you don't get a second backstab. You actually also don't get a second backstab when attacking from invisibility by the way (at least not with Shadowing Beyond), this seems to only happen when your first attack was from stealth. Also useful to keep in mind: for ranged weapons the 2m range is checked when the attack actually occurs, so if you click to attack and the target walks out of range during the attack animation, you don't get a backstab. Though of course that goes both ways, if you time it right you can have an enemy walk into 2m range during the attack animation as well. Anyway, I would say Backstab is not something you can completely build a character around, but if you're going to play a sneak attacking melee rogue anyway you can reliably trigger it and quickly pile up some initial damage. Sabre + fast off-hand weapon works nicely, as you'll get the second backstab very quickly (obviously, add some Lashes to those). So while it does take up a talent (and an investment in stealth, but a melee rogue should get that anyway) it can certainly be worth taking these days. Shadowing Beyond is an optional extra, I'd say Backstab is useful enough without it. But can be a good option to get your rogue out of trouble and apply some big damage in one go. I would recommend some light pistoling to the face in that case (if you have one handy). As noted you only get a single backstab off of invisibility, so you should make it count. Arquebus would actually be better still, but that just feels wrong to me somehow (and isn't Ruffian-like, if applicable).