mr_raider

Armor impacts recovery both of fighters and casters. So you want your speed dependent characters to be in lighter armor. Chanters are fairly speed insensitive so heavy armor is just fine. If your paladin in built as a sword and board tank heavy armor is fine, since his job is stand up and produce an aura. Casters need speed. They need to cast fast especially if they need to put up buffs at the start. I keep my priests below -20% because they need to cast buffs and heals on a moment's notice. A wizard can get away with -25% if he is an offensive caster since after level 5 he can haste himself. It also helps to give wizard and priests dex of 10 or higher with dex boosting gear. A back line wizard who focus on status effects and blasts can do fine with -10% armor. Remember armor is only DR, not deflection. Druids can be medium or light armored. Back line caster can do fine in light armor and front line shifters can use medium. Remember druids get DR buff spells at level 3 and 7 which can greatly enhance their survival. Ciphers are problematic. They have to engage in combat to build focus. Ranged ciphers can go light, melee ciphers may consider -40% armor even. Give ciphers good dex (14+) to mitigate. A few spoilers: Early in the game you can buy special light armors in analog that are -10% and give +9 deflection! I used that on my wizard until level 12. You will be able to enchant armor with speed enhancements at one point in the game, but that is limited by supplies. You will come up on a few quest items that arr -5% robe. Grab a few and enchant them. All armors can be upgraded to fine, exceptional, etc... So look at the armors base properties and bonuses, not just the DR.

I like this guide: It's for POTD but it works on hard. It uses custom characters but you can adapt many of the characters in game to the builds. Just make sure autolevel is disabled so you can configure companions manually. The stat spreads will be slightly off, but so what. Your main can be anything, and just pick the other characters to complement him. I recommend a priest in any party. I used the same guide with the following changes: 1. My MC was a ranged wizard with blast talents, not a sword shield tank (see Zeblastian hurstacker build). 2. I used different races 3. I built my priest with sneak attack abilities and the capacity to go ranged if needed (see the Schmemer's needle build). 4, I modified the talents and spell selection slightly. Note that it doesn't have rogue or fighter, but that's up to you.

Anyone notice Gyrd Haewanes gets buggy? Sometimes the accuracy bonus disappears from the character sheet, and I have to save reload for it to reappear.

How do Crit modifying talents interact with blast or minor blight? For example the 2nd level spell that converts hits to crits, or the merciless hand plot reward ability that bumps Crit damage by +0.3? Does it affect the initial strike or the blast also?

With respect to penetrating blast, the DR reduction only works on the crush damage from the blast right? It doesn't do anything for the primary target of the wand attack right? So the usefulness is more limited?

Does the sure handed Ila chant do anything for wands and rods?

I can see the interest in blast/penetrating blast. It would help clear out trash mobs pretty fast, and I can contribute to party DPS when I'm not disabling or direct damaging with spells. That would help save spells for serious ecounters. I guess though you really need good rods which come later. Weapon focus looks OK> Weapon focus noble would help rods/staves as well as summoned weapons like the staff and lance. Aspirant's mark looks decent, sort of like the old spell breach/greater breach spells of NWN. I don't like though having to beat a will save to apply a reflex status effect. At least it's 1 per necounter which is useful. For dangerous implement's I'm not specced right. I would have gone human, moon godlike or nature godlike. Right now I'm a dwarf. I guess veteran's recovery will help offset that. I also rolled with only 10 dex, so offsetting the speed penalty from penetrating blast will be harder. Right now I'm a status effect dispenser, and melee wizard if needed. Usually when fully buffed I can outdamage my front line, and I'm the best at punching through high DR. I like the versatility of fulfilling both roles. But not sure I want to go full tank (sword and shield, superior deflections, etc...) Any opinions on the baby sneak attack feat? How does that interact with summoned wepaons and ranged implements? Since I'm dishing out a lot of blinds and hobbles or attacking from the side it might come in handy. Interesting way of stacking damage boni. Didn't think of it. How viable is direct elemental damage in the long run? Seems like I would need to burn a lot of spells to take down a big guy, let alone trash mobs. That would be limiting with only two camping kits. Also targetting is nightmare on most direct damage spells unless I'm willing to fry my front line.

Finally picked up the game after leaving it unfinished for 2 years. This time I'm running a wizard. Is it me or are there a dearth of useful talents for wizards? I'm at level 6. I already have arcane veil, hardened veil and now I have no idea what to take I can get the elemental damage talents, but direct damage via spells ain't that useful in this game and my wiz is focused on dropping debilitating status effects while my party beats them down. If stuff goes to hell I throw on alacrity and concealhauts staff and join the beatdown myself. I can get blast and penetrating blast, but those talents do nothing for my conjured weapons other than kalakoth. Plus I did not really build my wiz around being a ranged character. I can go sword and shield for defense, but accuracy malus is tough and it doesn't help my conjured weapons. What I wish is there were talents that help your spells punch through harder like spell focus feats in Neverwinter nights, because having your blindness or grease spell miss really hurts. Any suggestions?

I'm trying to use console commands to edit companion starting attributes. I can make the modifications and they show on the character screen (i.e. set Aloths resolve to 9 and Perception to 14). However after I save the game and reload the companions stats revert to their default values. Am I missing something?

The way I see it, he doesn't care about melee DPS. The damage is done with abilities. When necessary to fight melee, buffs make up the difference.

Enjoyable overall. For me, the use of shields made most encounters less of an emergency and easier to manage. Combined with the casters' CC and debuffs, as well as the passive/active healing, most battles were fun with a full team. When I had only 2-3 party members, I would need to rest a bit more, but nothing excessive. I just suck. My MC(druid) died 22 times at lvl 6 while everyone else is around 5 or 10. I made the wizard the MC since it requires the most micromanagement. After level 5, the druid is just shapeshift, throw on returning storm, and wade in.

That's why I like druids and wizards. They can go upfront and fight or hang back on sling spells.

I found 1st, 2nd and 3rd line are very hypothetical roles. Many enemies swarm you on PotD so everyone needs to be able to take a beating.

Yeah o fought the Hunters naked. So that solves the cash issue. Still the problem of your party being almost two levels back. When I get to gilded vale, even if I skip all the rights in the woods, I'm still close to level 3. Just walking past the hanging corpses triggers a huge xp award.

Did you create your 5 adventurers right off the bat at gilded vale? That pretty much depleted all your cash. Plus your party starts at level 1 with 0xp which keeps it almost 2500xp behind you.

I thought soulbound weapons were universal, so any weapon focus would benefit them?

Chanters? Their abilities are pretty much speed insensitive. You can bash skulls and sing at the same time.

I must say wizard seems exceptionally versatile. You can go ranged with wands, and kalakoths. You can melee with parasitic staff. You can control with blind and confusion spells. You can nuke with aoe damage. You can even disable traps with the right skill investments.

It seems as long as Durance and my MC have spells left to cast we are fine. Going into a battle with spells depleted is killer though.

Nonsense. Getting pwned by boars at level 3 builds character.

Yeah did my wiz with 3 resolve and I'm constantly getting interrupted unless I have spirit shield up. May need to respec to 8-10 resolve and take a little out of might and per.

Good lord the death god like head choices are awful! I'm guessing these are the DnD equivalents of outsiders half/outsiders like tieflings and genasi.

Hmmm... So it's not a constant well of regeneration. Still it ain't bad. I was gonna take wood elf for the ranged bonus, but eleven wizards are like so a decade ago.

I've been experimenting with a wizard build and decided to go with godlike, since DnD/Nwn doesn't have quite a race like it. I can't quite figure out how silver tide activates. It's once per encounter at 75/50/25 endurance. Does that mean it triggers once at each of those cut points? What happens if you drop below a cut point and then HP goes back up, and then down again below the cut point? Finally, should I assume that might and the survival passive rest bonus benefit silver tide?

I'm using Linux and an NVME drive. It flies!