Niclole

Same is happening to me anytime I kill Xaurip Priests. It happens in the Caverns of Xaur Tuk-Tuk and in the Oathbinder sanctum for me. Every single time I kill a priest, the game crashes moments later. Tested it multiple times, tried killing everything else. Works fine, once the priests die the game crashes.

My top damage dealers in my last two playthroughs on Path of the Damned were both melee. 2handed Barbarian in the first and a dual wield flail monk. Flail...monk. Top damage. I think melee is doable, in fact in both playthroughs most if not all of my characters engaged in melee range in almost every fight. My second top damage in the first play through was a mace and shield priest of Skaen wearing padded armor. Admittedly a lot of his damage came from his spells but he was almost always in melee range in fights to cast the shorter range priest spells. In both play throughs I had only two ranged damage dealers, wizard/cipher in the first playthrough and priest/wizard in the second (who still spent more time in melee cause more often than not I just had her cast per encounter Parasitic Staff and beat on peoples faces). But yes, prepare to use Immune spells. Edit: To add to this the most fun Priests I play are always melee range priests. Long Range priests frustrate me cause of the fact a lot of their spells that I want to use have such limited range that they are always running around in already clogged up situations.

Final Fantasy Tactics Icewind Dale Pillars of Eternity If I want a good story I'll read a book. These games do it for me in the mechanics department while having passable stories. Edit: These are the only 3 games Ive ever played through completion more than two times. Which is why I prefer my games to have good mechanics/replayability more than story. I can reread books over and over and over and get the enjoyment of the story. But no matter how good a games story is I can only manage to play through it once, maybe twice. If the story is what draws me to a game I'll never be able to play it again.

Tl;dr No, I don't think they are particularly fun. The idea of being a duelist and riposting and having a good time as a dexterous fighter just wasn't a reality for me. More often than not 1 to 2 hits and the Rogue was down even with high con/resolve shield. I tried a retaliate rogue build on Path of the Damned. By level 8 I had replaced him with a 2 handed Fighter. 2 Handed Fighter was 10x tankier than the Rogue with a shield and all the defensive items I could give him lol. I don't think it works very well, but you could do it. Riposte seems like a skill that needed to be a higher likelihood of going off to me. You don't want your rogue getting hit much and with how often Riposte procs you need to get enemies attacking you to put out any level of damage worth noting. To me its a skill that should have scaling based on the amount of targets hitting you. If you are engaged 1v1 you should have a higher riposte chance and the more enemies engaging you the lower the proc rate should go. Fits the theme better for me, but alas Im not sure it could be done or if you could balance it or even if its a good idea.

It really is a shame those Scion talents don't work with DoTs. Pillars Talents in general disappoint me, but Id say "feats" and "talents" tend to be disappointing in most games. +6 accuracy, yaye.

Love me some Pillars there aren't many games I can play back to back play throughs on and want to play again right after. Only other game that did that for me is Icewind Dale. I imagine there is a reason for that lol.

Well I can't answer this definitively but there are really only two bashing shields I consider using: Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade but that is more for their additional effects than the bash itself. Maybe Scath Gwennek just cause it comes with inherent superb quality, but that isn't something I'd really do. I find more often than not I don't use bash shields, but some of them have interesting additional qualities. I'm sure Boeroer will be by shortly to point you towards his Barbarian.

Grats

I went in guns blazing at level 16, took a few tries but aoe spam eventually won at. Prep the scrolls of Res and Watchful Guardian. I try most fights this way for awhile until I determine it either wont work or just isn't worth the pain. But he is definitely beatable just going in. Party was Cipher, Barbarian, Mage, Priest, Fighter, Chanter. That was basically my strategy, kill as many of them as I could while revive spamming and once I got it down to a manageable number and regained control of the fight with the front line it seemed I had weathered the storm. Im not sure if NPCs like Concelhaut have limited spells, it seems they do though cause most of the truly outrageous stuff stopped coming out.

Sounds about right really, Barbarian OP.

Everything is good, I barely ever dual wield on Path of the Damned and have done all content. The question is: do you want good, best, or perfect. I tend to actually hate 2 handed weapons in most games but in Pillars I find more often than not half or more of my party is carrying 2 handers lol. I don't know the numbers, I only know what I've experienced: can two handed compete with dual wield? Depends what you mean by compete and what the target is, what the weapons are, what the skills are. Honestly, half my builds are just flavor builds that take relatively poor choices talent and ability wise and gear wise just for theme and I have very few to some issues on Path of the Damned. My personal opinion is that anything is competitive if you play it right. That said, mathematically, there is most likely always a "best case" scenario and from what advice I've seen it is: Dual wield. But again, I've not run into much that just doesn't work and you can get quite creative and have a good time still. Edit: The one weapon I find I use in almost every play through is Tidefall. Its by far my favorite weapon. It looks cool, it feels cool, it has a cool name, it has good lore, and it has good abilities. Love that weapon. In fact I love it so much I wish it didn't exist so I'd be tempted to use other weapon types, mainly cause Greatsword and Pike (Weapon Focus: Talent) both have such a good selection of weapons that its hard to justify not picking that weapon focus and using Tidefall. I have to force myself to use other 2handers. Which is still my biggest complaint, the darn weapon focus talents rather than being able to select 2-3 weapons to focus on yourself.

Cragholdt irritated me to no end. That said it wasn't trouble outside "Fight - Rest, Fight - Rest, Fight - Rest". Mainly cause I was winning fights but through healing and ending up with everyone grey lol. Its a fun area though and its cool to go there early and see how quickly you lose and then come back with all your gear and power and being like "Well, fun". Main reason being there are few areas that feel like this for me. Most of the time all the gear and power I accrue in this game just makes every area a cake walk. Early game: cautious pulling, tactics. Mid game: Swarm. Late Game: Fall asleep watch AI win. White March areas and a few fights break this for me, but that is generally how Pillars felt for me so something like Cragholdt is very welcome, if slightly irritating lol.

Lol. Pull of Eora into Monk with Torment Reach. Just killed like 10 enemies in 3 seconds in a fight I was sure I was going to lose cause everyone in my party but my monk was charmed after I cast Pull of Eora. Sucked them all into one area and my monk had 7 wounds and just unleashed devastation.

No problem, thanks for at least trying lol.

The whole skill itself was suppressed, like when you have one item that gives +5 Reflex and another item that gives +5 reflex you see (suppressed). The skill itself on my character sheet was suppressed. When I leveled up again it was no longer suppressed on the character sheet.