Jmerc

Just did Tactician/Blood Mage and Monk/Blood Mage, and had a great time. Want to keep using these "infinite resources" subclasses, just not with one another again for awhile. Tactician/Trickster seems like it could work in party play. I know in solo you can just stealth yourself and laugh but that requires teammates also remain in stealth. In party play you have Eder who can also use smoke veil and Tekehu FOE only Chill Fogs, plus both MC and Eder can be high-engagement persistent distraction frontliners with flanked immunity from squid and prudensco. So long as I keep my ranged friends out of flanked situations it seems doable. On fights with few big targets where youre likelier to want brilliant anyways, its seems pretty easy. I also like the ideas of Unbroken/Blood Mage or GoldPact/Blood Mage, but do the +1 shield armor rating or the stoic steel +3 stack with Ironskin? From what I've gathered playing a few runs now, if you multiclass with wizard you get Ironskin +5 armor rating, throw on the Patinated Plate you can get right away, and you're going to be pretty hard to kill. But in my monk run I noticed Iron Wheel sadly did not stack with Ironskin, (woe is me, only 18 armor!) and I'm looking for Tactician/Trickster - stack deflection, riposte and persistent distraction shenanigans, forcing them to break engage and overbearing guarding them (would be better with unbroken but oh well), no ironskin but you still get armored grace for heavy armor, Pallegina can give a +1 through aura. Though if using Prudensco instead of Squid or Kapana the whole armor thing is moot. Could use scrolls I guess. Unbroken/BM - Potentially 19 armor from heavy armor, a shield, and ironskin. Can't renew fighter resources but wtv, can still massively engage and break engage with spells for more powerful overbearing guards. Can also in a pinch stack deflection tho we probably tank resolve here and have the -15 vs bloodied penalty. -30 to reflex between the two classes...hrm. Goldpact/BM - Don't think Gilded stacks with Ironskin, if im wrong lmao that shouldnt be legal. But you get the +15 defenses to make up for BM -15, and if insightful and Stoic Steel stacks with Iron Skin we're in business. Not as easy to get a billion engage slots, I'd have to look over items, but 1v1 must be pretty hard to kill, you run out of pally resources but wtv you cant run out of Stoic Steel Anyone have any thoughts on the above three ideas, or has more fun ways to build strong tanks from Tactician or Blood Mage multis? Again, no Battlemage, been there done that. Thanks!

Im playing through POTD as a Sage and its been no problem so far, so I can tell you the Monk end of things is still good. Fighter I really can't say as I didnt play it much before patch. Maybe if you want a martial class with no restrictions on rp, consider barbarian or rogue, they didn't get touched and both multi well with Monk. If its strictly between Fighter or Pally, I think Pally is prolly better but I doubt you'll feel too terrible about picking Fighter either.

Basically pick a martial class and multi it with Troubadour and you're good to go.

Monk is still good, Fighter I didnt play much so I dont know

you'll eventually get to have avatar and spirit frenzy at once so thats pretty cool

actually going to play Monk now that the difficulty is up.

Was wildstrike really a problem? Iunno I kind of felt Shifters sucked compared to other martial classes, did they buff them some other way to compensate?

Votary and Fanatic are both worth considering. Bleak Walker and Shattered Pillar sort of fit together Roleplay wise, so do Bleak Walker and Berserker.

Monk/Paladin also doesnt care about waiting the extra levels because Paladin early game is strong as hell

I don't really want to go too crazy and drop stats for roleplay reasons (And to give myself just a wee bit of challenge by not min/maxing for PotD). Though if I can drop Constitution safely I might pump Dexterity a bit just to attack slightly faster. Also, I don't mind if they tweak it slightly, though I hope when they tune PotD they focus more on making the encounters harder rather than just nerfing everything. So with that in mind, how about... Might - 19 (8 + 1 Human Racial) Constitution - 10 Dexterity - 13 (2 + 1) Perception - 16 (6 points) Intellect - 10 Resolve - 10 (9+1) I might drop Dex for more Perception, but I dunno. I know this build is going to be super powerful, but honestly what I want most out of it is roleplay. Bleak Walker seems like it'd be a really interesting character to play, especially keeping to those particular dispositions. Fair enough, in that case however I'll let you know when I ran a 10 resolve character I think I failed most of the conversation resolve checks anyways, im not sure what resolve number you need to pass them is. Or maybe you just want to feel like your character isn't a resolveless coward, which I admit annoys me a bit about my 3 resolve characters If you're going crusader, fighter has good ways to buff perception/accuracy so you can favor dex a bit. You might want to consider slightly higher intellect for the disciplined barrage/vigorous defense skill trees and (if you want to use them) paladin exhortations.

Crusader is stronger, there's no question, though we'll see if that changes with the balance patch. Templar is certainly good enough for any difficulty as well, Im sure it can POTD solo if thats what youre into (frankly any Paladin multiclass probably can), but Crusader will be superior in any setting. Im tempted to suggest Arcane Knight if you want Paladin/caster but that might not be thematically what youre looking for, however one of the big draws of Magran templar are fire spells and im pretty sure multiclassing Wizard just does that better and earlier. You lose priest buffs/heals, but tbh when I ran Templar I didnt find myself using those much. I did love the free aoe heal though. Anyways you don't need con that high, just 10 is fine, and resolve can pretty safely be dropped very low. Paladin's defenses are very, very strong so don't sweat it, just make sure you take deep faith and don't screw up your alignment. Another thing about Templar, you have to track 3 positive and 3 negative attitudes, whereas for Crusader it'll be 2 and 2, so that can make a minor difference.

It sounds like the poeple hating on Chanter just skimped on perception, I was AOE-paralyzing everything on POTD without issue.

The Chants and Invocs are ridiculously good though. Take the passives from your martial class, thats not the point of the Chanter, though having 2 Chants active at once with a Troubadour is better than the vast majority of passives.

Take a look at the weapons list here: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_II:_Deadfire_unique_weapons. For guns, Dragon's Dowry shoots fire bullets, and Blightheart shoots corrosive bullets. The spearcaster arbalest, while not a rifle, is a magic-powered ranged weapon, which gets better the more you invest in the arcana skill; its not shooting bullets, unfortunately. If you're willing to use pistols, which seems thematically worse, there's Eccea's Arcane Blaster and the Thundercrack Pistol both of which are magic. Closest thing in the blunderbusses is probably Xefa's Empirical Explication, but thats a more sciencey-magic type weapon. Bit of an oddball character but try Ranger (Sharpshooter)/Priest (Skaen). If the character shouldn't have a constant pet, go Ranger (Ghost Heart) instead. You've got the forestry part covered by the Ranger, and the malevolent nefarious god in Skaen. The Skaen priest/rogue skills you get are pretty useful to a marksman, you get two movement abilities in Escape and Shadowing Beyond, a good damage skill in Finishing Blow, a powerful summon in Spiritual Ally and powerful self-buff in Minor Avatar. Take the ranged weapon from the list that feels the most like it fits your vision. From a power perspective, while none of them are terrible the Dragon's Dowry is considered by most to be the rifle to get. I've been trying to find a Marksman build I like for awhile, and while Ranger/Cipher is probably better just thanks to how good Whispers of Treason is, it didn't really click with me for whatever reason. However, it also makes sense for your character, and this post goes into detail about the build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/100597-class-build-the-will-bender-rangercipher. Cipher's use their psychic powers to beguile and mislead, which seems to be in the ballpark. The Soul Lash passive that Ciphers get adds a bit of bonus damage to weapon attacks, which can potentially be construed as "magic bullets", so there's that.

I would just say that these things need careful consideration and experience with each class and its combos. This is why I'm not willing to tackle any buffs in this thread, especially for all classes at the same time. I'll do some class specific ones when I'm more comfortable with my understanding of all abilities. Pretty much the same here. I've messed with Chanters and Rogues enough to discuss them with some knowledge. In fact, outside of maxing a Monk to try Inner Death combo, I have been retrying different Rogue/Chanter combos. Finding out what works, and what doesn't. I haven't messed with much else other than companions and their classes. Mostly trying this combo because it isn't as OP as say Chanter/Fighter, or one of the other silly builds I have seen on here. Working on this SF/Troub to get a build for the build section. Although Chanter/anything is probably OP, but I am a Chanter fanboy. So sue me. Have you tried Trickster/Skald, and if so what did you think? Im thinking of making a Harbinger and the general feeling seems to be go for Troubadour, but I kind of like the idea of spamming cheap offensive invocations