ShakotanSolari

My watcher will be a Bleak Walker paladin and I'll likely be taking Pallegina as a Paladin/Fighter, so if I end up bringing Eder along he'll be a full rogue to round out the party comp a bit better... I don't really want 3 tanky front liners.

I've tried it a few times and sadly I must confess that I am really not into it. It seems very repetitive and lacking any tactical depth or choice, I found myself just charging into canon range and pressing the same series of buttons over and over again until one of us sunk. Was fun for the first couple of turns but it seems to just drag itself out needlessly without offering any real reason for tactical flexibility as the turns progressed.

Had this same issue a couple of times while casting lay on hands on a party member who then moved out of range by the time the cast finished, effectively wasting the cast. I don't recall this ever occurring in Pillars 1 and honestly I'm not a big fan of this change, makes things needlessly complex and frustrating.

Don't know about a homecoming but there sure do seem to be a lot of dialogue options in the beta for watchers with the Deadfire background when dealing with the Huana.

Same, also love that the pets have an idle animation too. The antelope is really cute when he sits down.

Personally I think the defense from shields is adequate, especially if you factor in the modals, which I think are much more interesting and worthwhile than most of the other weapon modals. As far as being a "weak defensive weapon", that's mostly how the bashing shields were in Pillars 1, and honestly I think I'd be okay with bashing returning as an enchantment if only it's damage scaled up with the quality of the shield.

The shield certainly does open up some avenues of attack, but it also closes others. I agree that the existence of both an accuracy bonus for a single weapon and the penalty for shields do seem to be a bit of a contradiction by this logic - surely only one of these needs to exist, I think dropping the shield penalty makes the most sense both logically and in terms of game balance. Personally I would love to see a new proficiency system (or at the very least, better modals). I really dislike the way this is currently implemented. Back onto the broader topic of the thread, because I do so love talking about shields and a thought has just occurred to me, I very much disagree with the way shields are represented in Pillars (and indeed most rpg's). Shields in Pillars really just function as another set of armor, but shields are not armor. They are defensive weapons (there's a reason they go in the WEAPON SLOT). The key difference being that armor is passive - you put it on and it does it's job, that's it, whereas weapons require the wielder to actively engage with them. As we've seen in the video and as has been pointed out by many here in the thread, shields are not passive, they must be actively manipulated by the wielder and can contribute as much to the wielder's offense as they can to his/her defense. Adding some kind of damage quality to shields would certainly help to rectify this and, who knows, could maybe even be the first step in changing the currently very-flawed perception of shields in modern rpg's. Come on Obsidian, take that step, change rpg's for the better! P.S. Actually lets just go all the way and add dueling shields as a weapon class. God I love dueling shields

Seeing as the names of the modals are mostly related to real-world striking techniques I would have to say the later. Even the word "proficiency" just has the connotation of a more mundane origin, it implies skill through training rather than something that can be attributed to some magical property. Actually, this raises some really interesting questions regarding the nature of how implements work in Pillars...

The buckler was primarily used by archers or civilians who wanted some form of self defense, or really anyone who couldn't lug a larger shield around with them. It was also used extensively in duels apparently, for whatever reason. As for shields being used by amateurs - quite the opposite, professional soldiers were really the only people who widely used shields in most cases because of the reasons mentioned above - a shield is a very cumbersome thing to carry around so unless you're headed towards a battlefield you wouldn't really want to carry one around with you. Also being caught on a battlefield without a shield is not a very good thing because, unfortunately for the poor soldier, arrows exist. There are definitely many instances of of spiked bucklers that appear in historical manuscripts, but most of the time these spikes are meant to catch or trap an opponents blade (some appear to be more geared towards striking). I don't think I've seen many full-sized spiked shields, but a lot of shields historically had a metal boss in the centre which served the same function. The video posted by Jerek shows some great examples of this. I don't know about hooks on shields, I can imagine that would make it just as easy for an opponent to use against you, but I can see the benefit, the ability to pull your opponent's shield out of the way is one of the big strengths of wielding an axe or half-swording. This video demonstrates, at least to me, why this isn't true of medium shields. This a great video, some very informational stuff and I'm glad you posted it here! I must say though, that I don't think it really addresses the issue in question - the ability to hit someone with your sword when you are holding a shield versus the ability to hit someone with your sword when you are not holding a shield. Put simply - there is many more things you can do with the sword when you have a free hand. Keep in mind that the video also only deals with center-grip shields and many of the techniques demonstrated simply aren't possible with strapped shields. One interesting thing I'd like to point out in the video is around 16:00 when they begin the small sparring demonstration. You can see that the one fighter is able to maneuver himself to the other fighter's side and push his shield in front of his face while chopping at his legs. In this case, the fighter being controlled is simply unable to attack because his own shield is being used against him, he can not strike past it and he can not see his opponents attacks coming to his legs because, again, he cannot see past his own shield, this is an example of what I was trying to say in my first post.

Makes sense from a historical perspective. A medium or large shield can greatly reduce visibility and potential angle of attack, consequently an opponent that positions himself on your shield side will be harder to strike at as you need to swing past your shield, or drop your shield out of the way.

While the overall subject of pillars 1 was more somber than that of Deadfire (stealing souls from babis vs. angry god breaks my castle), I still think it had plenty of well-nuanced humor, especially via companion banter - Eder, Hiravias, Durance and Zahua (god I'm going to miss Zahua) all had some pretty funny dialogue points throughout the game. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing the humor expanded beyond the party in Deadfire, so long as it's not too over-the-top.

I wouldn't mind finding out In all seriousness though, I think that's a good point. The biggest noticeable difference is that godlike have very different skin, maybe Pallegina's body is covered mostly in feathers? We don't exactly have an avian godlike model to compare, but it would be interesting if the devs added that to Pallegina's character model in the game and it would certainly help to keep her in the same "daemon" category (as op described it) as the other godlike in Deadfire without really redesigning the character in any impactful way.

I'm all for giving shields damage, if only so I can make a devoted with shield proficiency for that captain america build

lol is that because u r confused ? nope, just checked again, no confusion that i can see

Since we're talking about shared flames, when using shared flames as a Bleak Walker, I noticed that all the allies who get effected by the buff also get sickened. Pretty sure that's not supposed to occur.

As far as I can tell there is no mention of melee weapons at all in the class description.

But you do get the penetration bonus with blights, also with other ranged weapons so long as you're proficient in them. Nowhere does it say devoted have to use melee weapons. Personally, I've been messing around with a devoted/priest of magran with pistol proficiency for the conjured pistol and it's pretty fun.

So Kalakoth's Minor Blights is categorized as a universal weapon and it does appear to count as proficient for devoted.

To segue this thread back on topic, Devoted bonus also seems to work with priest's conjured faith weapons so that's pretty cool. I haven't checked with wizard weapons but I assume they would be no different, except maybe Kalakoth's blights as I don't think it has a relative proficiency.

Just tested this, yes it is effected by soul whip.

I agree completely, this is a big problem. Multi-classing is supposed to be an optional feature, not a necessary tool to use in order to make your character viable. As others have pointed out in this thread, it is probably impossible to balance all 880 options, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to shorten the power gap between single and multi-class characters. Both should feel as rewarding to play as the other, but that simply isn't true right now. The biggest contributor to this problem is, in my mind, that the philosophy of "multi-class sacrifices power for diversity" simply has not be put into practice, though I feel that this can be attributed more to single-classes lacking power than to multi-classes lacking diversity. Currently the benefits of a single-class seem largely superficial - the access to highest power levels is something that means absolutely nothing for 75%+ of the game and as it is currently we don't even know if those abilities are going to be worth the offset. Likewise, the impact of quicker advancement through power levels seems to have very little noticeable effect on most classes. I feel it important to mention here too that power level is not very well defined in the game at the moment. Seeing as it is literally the only advantage that a single-class character has over a multi-class one, it would seem to me that making the effects of power level more transparent and more obvious would be a rather important step to take towards enticing people to wanting to play a single-class character. TL;DR: power level needs to have more of an impact on the game.

The lighting effects and shadows are particularly appealing. A huge improvement over the first game. I also love the subtle changes to armour and weapons as the quality of the items increases, a very nice touch. My favourite thing so far though has to be the colour palette, especially in Poko Kohara, it's easy to make a drab dreary dungeon, but the deep dark places in Deadfire just seem so... alive.

These are all portraits found in the Beta gamefiles under gui/portraits/companions, I'm pretty sure they aren't "confirmed", most likely a lot of them are just there as placeholders.

My problem with the wizard subclasses is that they just seem, for lack of a better word, lazy. Other classes have some very interesting subclasses that, at least in concept, introduce unique and thoughtful changes to the core class. Wizard subclasses just seem almost like an afterthought - as if someone said "oh crap we forgot about wizards, lets just lock them out of some spell schools and call it a subclass." There's just no flavour to them.

The game has a warning for beginners when selecting a multi-class character, maybe it should have a similar warning for sub-classes?