MortyTheGobbo

Probably true, but since I've already picked it for her, I just need to make the most of it. I'm not sure if I'll respec my ranger to take concussive shot or just have Maia do it. It's not as if I'm making much use of Play Dead, so maybe.

Huh, okay. Maybe I need to respec my own ranger to use it, then.

I guess I do have all those blunderbusses and hand mortars lying around and not doing a whole lot. It's worth a try. I've never really given concussive shot much thought.

Well, I guess this is another "I can't figure out this NPC" thread. In my second playthrough I decided to make Maia a Ranger/Wizard, because my own Watcher is a single-class Ranger using crossbows and guns. So she's dual-wielding pistols and casting spells. But it doesn't feel too impressive. I guess it's a combination of MCing casters being a risky proposition and rangers being wobbly in general. I've been trying to have her drop debuff spells and then fire away with her pistols, but I wonder if people have found any particularly effective combinations.

With my future chanter Watcher squared away, I guess I'll just give Konstanten a pike, have him use the modal and spam Killer Froze Stiff, Shield Cracks and White Worms. Reduced deflection and paralyzed enemies should work well for crit-fishing.

I've created a troubadour with Reny's Ghost an Swift Winds of Death, then gave her At the Sight of her Comrades on level 2. It'll be a bit before I properly start this playthrough, so we'll see how it goes then. I wasn't sure if Thrice Was She Wronged is useful or not, but +10 to will and fortitude is handy enough. Even though it's a cone, Killers Froze Stiff is probably too good not to take. It just takes some repositioning.

Bellower seems a bit impractical for a ranged chanter, since I'd need to constantly pay attention to the chants' AoE and make sure they affect my allies. Probably not good for a first attempt at a chanter PC. So I guess troubadour it is. I'll pick the best party-buff phrases, summons and invocations that don't need be to stick close to the enemy. And yeah, I see Aaamina's Legacy actually has a bonus if the wielder is a dwarf. I think it might be the only such item? I can't remember seeing other race-based bonuses.

The character in question, formerly a druid, is a boreal dwarf from Deadfire, so a hunting bow would fit her fine.

A pike is a possibility, I suppose. It's a sort of mid-line option. But it's something I'll go back to with Konstanten, after giving him a single weapon didn't quite work out. So my own chanter might want something else. I'm not looking for any special synergy, really. Just a comfortable way to play a ranged chanter on Veteran. Bellower is a curious choice, though either way getting to Eld Nary would take some time.

My current character is using guns and crossbows, so I'd rather not repeat that. What makes Eld Nary's Curse stand out here, though? Also, are chanter subclasses worth picking?

Inspired by my recent Konstanten woes, I've decided to play my next Watcher as a pure chanter, rather than a druid. I don't like full casters anyway and I'd like to finally "get" chanters. But since it always seems like my frontline is more crowded than my backline, and because all my chanters so far have been melee, I'd like to play a ranged one. What are the best ways to play a chanter who uses a ranged weapon and stays in the back? I figure I'd want to have a high intellect and just keep on buffing my party. And since offensive invocations tend to be cone-shaped and reward being up close, I should probably focus on summoning.

I really don't care about stereotypes and I appreciate it when they're broken. Anyhow, the main issue is really that "attacks at range" is a poor class identity. Ideally, rogues, rangers and other classes would attack at range differently. Fighters aren't a "fight in melee" class, they're a durable class with interrupts. Which is if different from the barbarians' AoE-heavy debuff style. The non-caster classes are very skewed towards melee, with rogues, rangers and ciphers (who are sort of half-casters) being the only three that can rely on ranged weapons. I know there's specialized builds to have the others do it too, but I'm talking about what most players will use. And rangers are sort of stuck as the one ranged-focused class, but not really.

Pretty much all their offensive powers work with ranged attacks. So does their main feature, sneak attack, and its upgrade, Deathblows. Ring the Bell has a clause for ranged attacks. So I'm not really seeing any of that.

Ranged Rogues are inherently defying their own class IMO. The Stealth is a major part of the identity of the class, and the stealth stuff doesn't work from range. And yes, it makes sense for both rangers and rogue to fight in range and melee.... Rogue is better in melee, and Ranger is better at RANGE, it's in the name. Being not as good when you are doing something that doesn't fit the class makes sense TBH. I don't feel like the capability of other classes to fight from range needs to hold back Ranger. And I agree about the pets, the game clearly cares but refuses to act like it. I ran a fighter/rogue and never used stealth once. I'm running Ydwin as a pure ranged rogue now (she was a cipher/rogue in my previous playthrough) and don't use stealth either. So it may be a major part, but hardly obligatory. Still, though, I think we can agree that the game wants to make pets a key part of ranger but doesn't really follow through.

I used to want a petless ranger, but I changed my mind at one point. Without a pet, a ranger is just a dedicated shooting class. How do we balance it out with ranged rogues? And why shouldn't rangers be able to fight in melee? Pillars inherits the D&D class list, and while it does remarkably well with it, the list itself is still pretty bad in itself. Giving rangers pets makes them less bland and awful than D&D rangers. That being said, it doesn't help if the pet itself is a liability. I agree with people who say it dies far too easily. Resilient Companion is practically a requirement. And while I stand by pets being important to rangers... I don't feel like the game does. The class feels really unfocused, straddling the fence between a pet-owner and an accurate marksman, with some melee abilities thrown in.

As is usual with tweak/rebalance mods, this one comes with some interesting ideas and a host of questionable ones. The ranger changes do look pretty good, though. I have to agree with those who say that the pet dies way too easily. I don't mind rangers having a pet, as such. It makes the class stand out, since otherwise it doesn't really have any kind of identity - D&D has tried and failed to give it some for 20 years. But that doesn't help much if the pet is a liability until you invest in it heavily. And the ranger also tries to be a "marksman" class, which ends up just straddling the fence. I don't think it should be a sharpshooting class, though. That's just too limiting and would interact poorly with ranged rogues. I'm playing a single-class sharpshooter right now, and while it's not bad, it's not terrific, either. My wolf doesn't die quite as easily now that I took a bunch of buffs for it, at least. The highest power levels have some decent active abilities now, but 5-7 is still pretty sad. We can only hope Obsidian keeps tweaking rangers, I suppose.

Yeah, I've got him as a pure chanter so any MC synergies aren't going to work.

In my recent playthrough I've decided to make Konstanten a single-classed Chanter. And... I'm not sure how good he is at it. I'm level 12 now and trying to use him more, but it's not working out too well. He's a Skald, so summoning is harder for him. He'd be great at spamming Killers Froze Stiff, but his crap Intellect means his affliction durations are short. I tried giving him a single weapon to score crits and rack up phrases, but it doesn't seem to work. Granted, I seem to have gone into an area that outlevels me - the catacombs under Berath's temple. His stats seem really more suited to a barbarian, so maybe I should just make him a tank and have him chant phrases? Not sure. Has anyone managed to make him work?

Have we ever seen an RPG where elves actually acted this way?

I was honestly unsurprised when it turned out some weapon types are massively more represented with uniques. It's not even a Pillars problem, since the dame damn thing happened in Baldur's Gate ages ago. Which does mean the devs should have seen it coming.

I loathed per-rest spells in Pillars 1. They're impossible to balance in a game where we can just rest whenever we want and there's not much the game can do to stop them. Their balancing effect in D&D, such as it is, depends on the GM's willingness and ability to enforce strict pacing. In a video game, there's no GM to enforce it. So it works even less than in D&D, where it doesn't work very well to begin with. Thus, as you go up in levels in Pillars 1, the foremost tactical consideration becomes "how many spells from my casters am I willing to spend?". Spending enough lets you demolish encounters. That being said, I think Deadfire's system lacks something as well. It is, in fact, too close to Pillars 1's pseudo-D&D setup. It's mostly the same spells, and interactions between them, but operating on a per-encounter basis. I think they should have gone further and changed it more.

I prefer Deadfire's, simply because the system in PoE 1 not only makes the "big three" overpowered but just dominates the game in a very unhealthy way. Tactics begin with "how many of those classes' spells are you willing to blow in this encounter?". The other classes' daily abilities are honestly often pathetic. Yay, I can stab someone twice per day to weaken them. Or I can have a druid do that to the whole enemy group. That being said, I agree that Deadfire's system is this weird in-between thing when it comes to the casting classes. It hasn't been changed much, just scaled down to per-encounter spells. I do think they should have altered it further and maybe even gone whole-hog and dropped this whole pseudo-Vancian casting. Or at least made it a bit more dynamic.

Every time I see those threads they somehow manage to sour my memory of Baldur's Gate. I should probably stop reading them and keep some of my nostalgia intact.

A PoE 2 non-spellcasting character has several abilities they can use other than just attacking by level 5, and keeps gaining them. A BG1/2 one only gets some by Throne of Bhaal, in most cases. That you choose to ignore a factor doesn't make it not exist.

I feel that when people gush about Baldur's Gate tactics, they specifically mean the first half of BG2, because that's when the game actually has those. Everyone is reasonably competent and won't die when something looks at them funny. Spellcasters cast, non-spellcasters... well, they auto-attack day in and day out, but at least they do it well. But everyone has a role and you have to leverage those properly. It's as good as AD&D is ever going to get. The early game of BG1 has the AD&D charm of everyone being a good hit or two from dying, and spellcasters have a handful of spells they can cast, so the best tactic is to give everyone ranged weapons and kite the hell out of everything. Sometimes you'll fire off a Sleep spell and end the encounter instantly. But you'll also quick-load a lot when someone trips over an arrow and dies. Then there's the encounter design which will send those arrows at you in swarms. The latter half of BG2 and the entirety of TOB, meanwhile, swings in the other direction - AC ceases to matter, as everyone will only ever miss on a natural 1. So mundane combat becomes a race to deplete HP. Spellcasters are obscenely powerful, but a lot of the time can't do anything because of massive spell resistance and super-high saves. And, once again - even at its best, half of the characters in a Baldur's Gate party have nothing to do except auto-attacking and using items. So the talk about using the same abilities over and over in Pillars kind of rings hollow.