MortyTheGobbo

It's frankly amazing to me that people bring up Neverwinter Nights 2, of all games, as an example of good design or variety. 3.5 D&D is bad enough on tabletop; bringing it to a computer game was an unmitigated disaster.

Yeah, now that Obsidian listened to people and reintroduced class-neutral talents in a fashion, they need to keep listening and do something about the classes who used to have those exclusively or semi-exclusively. New passives that make them further specialized in weapons styles would be fine, but not enough. They need proper passive and active abilities that reflect their roles.

I'm still baffled people feel so strongly about this, but hey, if it makes someone happy...

They'd better, otherwise it's not going to work out super well. Fighters are meant to be masters of battlefield control and lock-downs, according to Josh. Passive bonuses to things don't exactly spell that out, even if they were exclusive or semi-exclusive to the class.

Boring number increases were a bad choice for fighter-specific abilities, or barbarian-specific etc. If they have to exist, and I honestly don't think they do, they belong in the proficiency system. But now the fighter and some other classes only have a handful of abilities that are actually unique to them. Deadfire was supposed to improve on that, but when I look at the ability trees for the "martial" classes and subtract the talent-equivalents... there's not much left.

It sounds like they really need to add some more actual abilities to fighters, rogues and barbarians now. Since now everyone can take abilities that used to be theirs.

I believe the intent behind those is to make it clearer what stacks with what. Which is rather less than clear in Pillars 1. Hopefully with the cyclopedia entry it actually does that.

He did say "and many more things".

I played a rogue with a crossbow and it was fine. I don't play on higher difficulty levels. So shooting and dealing damage isn't the problem. What I'm worried about is whether it'd be redundant to keep Sagani in the party. Making her a melee ranger should work. Or just going with one fast-shooting and one slow-shooting ranger. It might stay in the realm of speculation, anyway, but it doesn't hurt to plan. My other possible playthrough is a priest of Eothas... although I'd like to stay ranged, and priests of Eothas don't benefit from that. Ah well.

I really question whether such talents/abilities should exist at all. I rather hoped they'd get folded into proficiencies. Since most characters will take them anyway, why not assume that and apply it across the board? I'd really rather not pick between something fun and unique to my class and something that'll just bump my numbers up. Even if the bump in numbers is effective.

I suppose making Sagani a melee ranger could indeed work.

I mean, if some talents that weren't specific to classes were also obligatory and taken by almost everyone, I'd say it was a problem in itself.

So I've been thinking about maybe replaying my crossbow orlan rogue as a ranger instead, since that's what I'll run him as in Deadifre anyway. Building a crossbow ranger should be straightforward enough, but is there any way to make him not overlap with Sagani? I just feel like having two rangers in the team would be an overkill, since the class doesn't have much variety.

Whatever they do, daily spells are the worst and best forgotten. They're nigh-impossible to balance and mean that the classes that use them either don't contribute much or contribute overwhelmingly. Yes, in D&D spells are basically a game within a game. This is a bad thing. D&D magic is horrendously imbalanced and barely-functional.

I don't think talents should come back, honestly. A lot of the ground they covered is now handled by multiclassing. In PoE1, if you wanted a fighty priest, you took some talents to help you. In Deadfire, you should multiclass a Fighter/Priest. The dearth of options for single-classed characters that people describe is an issue, but it has to be handled by, well, more options. That's how I see it, anyway.

Having passive and active abilities use the same "currency" strikes me as questionable in general. It was already a thing in Pillars 1, for many classes, but I had problems with it then, too.

I can see the reasoning behind removing talents. But from the sound of it, they should compensate for it with more class abilities - a wider selection and more picks.

Put them in a corner somewhere and disable their AI?

I'm pretty sure that was the point... The ability selection of fighters, rangers, barbarians, rogues and paladins in PoE 1 was pretty dreary, and I hoped Deadfire would upgrade it. Which it seems to be doing, but not as much as I'd like.

Yes, some classes' ability trees are a bit too close to the first game to my liking.

This should be way easier to keep track of and involve less micromanagement, so that's good. Maybe I won't forget I have it quite as often.

I don't think I've ever even found that thing...

I think weapon focus talents are no longer a thing, since they're cutting down on all the fiddly bits that modify accuracy. If you're proficient with a weapon, you can use its modal, and that's it. Except for the Devoted fighter subclass, which actually gets penalties for stepping outside its one and only proficiency.

The atmosphere and music are excellent, yeah. It's just the endless AD&D combat that turns me off. That, and not a lot of character-building variety.

I feel like it's a combination of staves being already a melee weapon and rods, sceptres and wands already covering different kinds of magic implements. Besides, they're all effectively two-handed in PoE 1 - though that won't be true in Deadfire. Now, of course a wizard can wield a quarterstaff like anyone else, but it's still a melee weapon. So it does create a bit of a hole, where the archetypal wizard with a staff has to actually hit people with it.