MortyTheGobbo

I completely forgot about that. Thanks.

In my newest playthrough, I can't access the master staircase to the Endless Paths from the keep grounds. The trap door only has an information pop-up about how it has been battered by the elements. I remember using it before, but I can't remember what might be needed for it. Is it a particular keep upgrade?

I find it much more odd they didn't include retraining from the start. It's an expected feature in RPGs nowadays, and for a good reason. It means you can develop your character the way you want, without worrying that you're stumbling into a bad decision.

That sounds like a lot of effort just to satisfy some people who can't bring themselves to use the respec option.

As I got back to Pillars, I'm coming around to removing the split. Health is just a bit too punishing. There's potential for a lot of damage in this game, so it's possible to lose most of your health through misfortune or a lapse in concentration. It's especially problematic for lightly-armoured characters, and I think it contributes to the problem of their getting too much of a beating if they get close to the front line. So it's either that, or make health easier to regain. Which kind of muddies the division. So I can see why they just removed it and focused on endurance.

I'd say that sexuality and romance don't come up enough for Eder that his also being attracted to men would be a retcon. It probably would be for Hiravras, but he's not coming back. It would also be a retcon for Maneha, who makes it clear she's only into women. But she's not coming back either. Whatever we call it, a romance with Aloth would be made awkward by Iselmyr's tagging along.

You can, I don't know... not read it? The possibility of romantic and/or sexual relationships in Deadfire is a perfectly valid thing to discuss. So is their handling, if they do appear. If you don't care, just ignore it, but don't demand that people do the same.

It's important to remember that at least five classes (fighters et al) will receive more active abilities than they had before. Everyone will also get the universal Empowerment resource, and modals will be available to everyone proficient in a weapon. So there's going to be notably more moving parts and complexity for every given party member.

I'm not sure if adding ranged options to fighters, barbarians and monks would be advisable. All three of them have themes and mechanics geared towards close combat. I like variety, and I like how much of it there is in Pillars. And Deadfire continues to bring more. But sometimes you just need to know when to fold it. I could see monks, since they've already got an ability for that. But those other two... not so much.

I'd say PoE 1 rangee is better at melee than a fighter is at shooting... it's not impossible to make a ranged fighter, but you'd be really swimming upstream.

I wish I'd been able to back the campaign, so I could have access to the beta. Between multi-classing, subclasses and the universal empowerment mechanics, there's going to be a staggering number of combinations. At least I know there are dedicated players who will hunt down every exploit.

The vanilla Ranger from BG wasn't any better at archery than any other warrior class. Really, they were just Figthers with a different XP progression, giving up weapon specialization for some tricks and spells. In BG2, they also got dual-wielding, for... some reason. The problem with petless rangers is that once you take away the pet, what makes a ranger different than a fighter or rogue who likes to hang out in the wilds? They need something to set them apart, and in Pillars, it's the animal companion. We could wish they had another gimmick, but it's too late for that. I could see a melee ranger subclass. It's already possible to play a ranger as melee, just a bit counter-intuitive. The game plays up their ranged capabilities, but you can pick those abilities that work with melee weapons. A dedicated subclass could work with that.

Understood. Iirc it was told that a plyer can choose not to pick a subclass if he wants to?If yes, then indeed a generic fighter should be somewhat competitive with the devoted. Josh told that this subclass was partially inspired by the Kensai kit. I guess Devoted could share some of it's downsides, like: - inability to wear heavy armors, or - just a plain malus to DR; or - inability to wear armor at all, but get some scaling DR or deflection + reflex bonus to compensate, or - lower hp per level - or like Osvir mentioned: restricted from using/taking some of fighters defensive modals or abilities; or - they can't benefit from Constant Recovery something like that Those would all make sense, yes. I didn't know the class was inspired by Kensai, but I'm not surprised. I plan to run a fighter/rogue with a greatsword in Deadfire. Guess the fighter half might well be Devoted. And I'm fairly sure subclasses are optional. That's why they're all supposed to be trade-offs. The closest we'll likely get to petless ranger is the Ghost Heart, yes. If you want to play an archer without an animal companion, a rogue is your best bet in PoE1, assuming you don't want magic. A ranged fighter subclass could be interesting...

Black Jacket has the drawback of lower accuracy. Devoted could have drawback of: - losing the unique bonuses he has (until resting), once he equips any other weapon; or - simply getting a damage penalty with other weapons; or - inability to use/profit from specializations with other weapons and related modals Those make sense, but my point is that they're too easily mitigated by just... never switching your weapon. Which is inconvenient if you want to open a combat with an arbalest/arquebus shot, or run into enemies who resist your damage type, but not overly so. Of course, Deadfire might put more emphasis on using a variety of weapons.

That sounds great. Most of the time, builds are tinkered around specific weapon anyway. This actually makes me wonder. What drawbacks will this subclass have? Not being able to use any other weapon category, or weapon period, isn't that much of a penalty, since like you said, most characters will pick something and stick with it.

I wonder if she has to pick up that subclass. I mean... of course I'm going to take it. Just curious. I guess this also means the other companions are likely getting their own unique subclass...? I think I'm safe to expect as much. I think Pallegina's paladin order will remain unique to her. But I could be wrong.

Yeah, everything there is spot-on. Per-rest abilities are not only a massive pain to balance, but also really stunt pacing. Players shouldn't have to wonder if they want to use this spell now or later. Especially since a caster's effectiveness will vary drastically based on a player's willingness to spend them.

I knew I'd seen this kind of thing somewhere. It was Arcanum. Not sure how I felt about it, really. Arcanum was a good concept wrapped in a clunky engine and rather atrocious mechanics. But that part wasn't really bad. Really, though, I used to be super into realism, immersion and stuff. Then I realized it usually comes down to a thin layer that covers more of the same thing.

I honestly don't mind it. Keeping track of all the teammates in Pillars was difficult, increasingly so on high levels. A lot of abilities sat unused just because I couldn't focus on that one party member. Cutting the size down to five should help with that.

I'm disappointed we won't be getting proper thrown weapons, but then, I suppose they'd need to find a whole new niche for them, mechanically speaking. We've already got two kinds of bows, two kinds of crossbows and three (now four) kinds of firearms. They already cover all sorts of bases in ranged combat.

There's also the Escape ability, that you can use to get out of engagement. I beat the game with a crossbow rogue. Stacking the right conditions and performing a surgical strike from stealth could result in pretty obscene damage. This is all a good thing, mind you. There's no reason rogues shouldn't be able to be snipers. But it is perhaps too good in comparison to melee. I wonder what Deadfire will do about that. We know that rogues will be tougher overall, and that there will be an assassin subclass that requires positioning and is flimsier, but can do a lot of damage if positioned properly. I suspect it will be melee-specific, since otherwise we run into the same problem.

Rogues don't actually lose any abilities by going ranged. Other than that, I agree.

It sounds like one of those ideas that sound wonderful and immersive in theory, and turn out to be nothing but a chore in actual play.

A Chanter subclass that intones phrases more quickly is going to be naturally better at invocations, since they'll be available more often. The downside is that the benefits of phrases are less reliable. Seems fairly straightforward.

I'd say the Troubadour is already fairly Invocation-focused, since rapidly chanting phrases will let them fire off Invocations more quickly, at the expense of the phrases' duration.