MortyTheGobbo

I could see Might being sort of folded with Constitution as "Brawn", and serving as a general physical beefiness score. Then damage and healing could depend on different attributes, depending on class and maybe equipment. But that'd require a complete overhaul of the ability scores and I'm not sure if it'd be worth it.

Hm, interesting. I don't plan to play cipher myself, to be clear. I just feel like I'm not using Grieving Mother to her full potential, and I was wondering what I did wrong. It won't help me much in my current run, since I've almost finished it. But it might in my next one. Assuming I'd use non-unique version of those weapons until I found them, I'd give her a war bow, a sceptre, an estoc, a staff or two sabres. I'm currently deciding between using a war bow or some dual-wielding combination on my paladin. But even if I run melee on my MC, maybe I'll have GM go melee too, just for the sake of variety.

The controversy over attributes feels like it begins and ends on Might. Because every other attribute more or less does what it always does in RPGs.

Money was an issue for me for the first couple of hours into every run. Past that, selling all the crap your enemies drop will pay for everything you need and then some. When making consummables, availability is a much bigger problem than money. You'll need to visit a lot of merchants to get the ingredients you need.

The latter part more than the former. I'm not sure how it'd work, though. A high-might character can be a beefy barbarian, a brainy wizard or a crossbow-sniping rogue. Just to name three. How do you write a scripted interaction where they get past an obstacle that fits all three of those? A wizard can bend bars or such with their magic, but what about a priest or rogue? I'm in favour of the idea behind the might attribute, and mechanically it works. But its execution in the non-combat interaction is wonky. On the other hand, though, making it just physical strenght is a sure-fire way to make 50% of characters ignore it.

I've played Pillars of Eternity on-and-off for a while, but I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of its mechanical intricacy. One of the things that I can't crack are ciphers. Many of their powers feel situational, but more importantly... what's a good weapon for one? I've had Grieving Mother use a blunderbuss, but that's mostly because I defaulted to it based on hearsay about it being a good choice. Now I'm not so sure. Can ciphers melee, or is it a choice of a ranged weapon for them?

Everyone's pretty harsh on the OP, but I see the point. If not their word choice. At-will stuns get pretty ludicrous at times. Protecting yourself against disabling effects is part of good strategy in a game like this, but when you've got a bunch of enemies who can repeatedly inflict those conditions, it gets annoying. With some conditions, it necessitates using a particular spell or scroll to immunize your party, but I don't think there's anything that works on stun.

I think it's fine if a tank character needs to wear heavy armour, but not every front-line character is a tank. And to me, at least, keeping melee fighters alive is an issue. A character who's not specced out for soaking up damage kind of melts on contact. My first character was a light-weight fighter with a greatsword, and it worked okay, but that may have been due to the innate fighter regeneration.