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Dual-wield inquisitor with soulblade as the sub-class, alternating FoD and Soul Annihilation, can be fun. By mid-levels, a single FoD (with decent weapons) will usually push your focus up over 100, and then you spend that on SA. FoD is a full attack and SA isn't, but with 100 focus, SA actually does more damage, so it's kind of like having 24 full attacks in a row (12 zeal, using devil of caroc breastplate and the paladin passive for an extra point of zeal). And the passive for a 25% chance to get an extra point of zeal for each kill helps, too. The only other active cipher ability I use frequently is Borrowed Instinct, though I take a lot of the passives. I went Kind Wayfarer, so between FoD healing and the healing aura, my PC did the bulk of the healing in the party as well as the bulk of the damage.

This is unfortunate. I haven't gotten to this point in the game due to other issues, but half the appeal of a new RPG is to take your time and explore everything. If a good chunk of the game is locked behind time limits and red tape... Do the automatic kingdom management options eliminate these issues?

I just tested it against BG and NWN, both of which are games that I've played far more than Pillars. Kingmaker was noticeably slower, when viewed at similar scale. Obviously if you zoom way out on BGEE so that it's showing 4 times the amount of area that Kingmaker can show, then it'll seem like you're walking slower, but it's just because you're walking a farther distance. Part of the problem might be that Kingmaker makes your character slow way down whenever you start moving or change directions. Without that, it might be bearable.

No, it absolutely is not. And I'm talking about when I'm unencumbered.

Showing negative effects first would be a big help. At the absolute minimum, they have to do something about the list of effects being hidden behind the rest of your UI or scrolling off the page without any way to see it.

... Patch 1.10 and *still* no indication of when they'll fix walking speed or UI performance? To be honest, I don't know how you guys are playing the game. I imagine the UI issues may not affect everyone, but I'm pretty sure the walking speed does, and I can only manage about 5 minutes at a stretch before the walking speed annoys me so much that I quit playing. I kind of wish somebody took the NWN2 engine, fixed the camera and all the bugs that are still left in it, and replaced the 3.5 ruleset with Pathfinder.

I occasionally see an odd AI bug. I haven't figured out how to replicate it reliably, so I don't have a save file handy, but here's how it works: If I set a custom AI where the final item on the list is "Always True" but has a timer, the game will occasionally ignore the timer and simply repeat that action until the character runs out of the resources to perform it. I can work around it by adding an Always True auto-attack to the end of the list, but if someone doesn't notice that it's happening, it could hamstring their character without them realizing why. The scripts where I've specifically noticed it being a problem are specifically scripts that are buffing only. It's not as much of a problem if a character uses the same attack multiple times in a row, but if they spend all their resources casting the same buff six times in a row while it's still active, it becomes an issue. (I believe it's only buffs that require a timer in the AI trigger, but I haven't checked recently whether buffs that can use an inspiration trigger do the same thing.) I just now encountered it in 3.0.1, but I've seen it in earlier versions of the game as well. For the playthrough where I just encountered it, I tried creating a save file, but then I loaded that save four more times and it didn't trigger again.

It's unfortunate you can't swap spells, but I'd still take something other than Magic Missile at level 1. You can cast your cantrips as frequently as you want (as far as I could tell), and they are almost as good as a level 1 Magic Missile. In other games, I usually pick it up the next time I get a first-level spell pick (two missiles is fine).

A few responses to some previous posts... Magic Missile is good as one of a sorcerer's first-level spells, but I don't recommend it as one of your first picks -- it just doesn't do much when your character is level 1. Something with crowd control would be a better option to start with (I haven't gotten far enough in the game to say what would be best). For those considering Eldritch Knight builds, note that the game doesn't include the Still Spell feat, so there's no reliable casting while wearing armor for spells that have somatic components.

Is that a joke? Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a good rule set, which did not come from the studio. It came from decades of development over the life of D&D, leading to d20, 3.5, and then Pathfinder. Is there anything else good about it? Certainly not the engine. Maybe the game gets better -- I can't tell, because it's unplayable now. Nothing has stopped Obsidian from using Pathfinder, it's been out for a while now. While there's still bugs, Owlcat has pretty much figured out RTwP gameplay things that Obsidian never could, stuff like AI (especially companion AI), the overmap, resting, inventory management, an intuitive UI. You know stuff that actually makes people want to play the game. How do I customize the Kingmaker companion AIs? Right now, they just do whatever they want, and I haven't found the location in the UI so that I can set them up how I want. As for the UI, it's hard to judge whether something is intuitive when it's running about 5 seconds behind my mouse.

Is that a joke? Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a good rule set, which did not come from the studio. It came from decades of development over the life of D&D, leading to d20, 3.5, and then Pathfinder. Is there anything else good about it? Certainly not the engine. Maybe the game gets better -- I can't tell, because it's unplayable now.

I see they delayed the big patch. 1.06 still has the problems that are making it impossible for me to play. Have they said *anything* about fixing the UI performance or adding an option so that your characters aren't slogging through a pool of molasses? Or fixing the startup time? Adding a note saying the game will boot slowly the first time around is kind of pointless, when it boots slowly every single time. And why is their publicly released version of the game crashing every time I quit, with a message that I don't have developer debugging tools installed on my Mac? Still can't find any documentation on how the Magus feats function, so I switched to Cleric, but still stopped 10 minutes into the game because my party walks slower than an 80-year old with a walker. I really, really want to play a Pathfinder game, but they're going to need to make a lot of progress to convince me that this is it. P.S. Why implement Eldritch Knight but not implement Still Spell???

Gladiator's Sword +5 deflection is constant as long as you are pairing it with a shield. It shows up on my character screen on all the time, and doesn't appear to be conditional. Gladiator's sword also adds +10% damage (when used with shield) and +1 PEN, so I think it's kind of underrated. There's also Outward Spikes on Tuitilo's Palm for an extra riposte-like attack, if you prefer a shield that gives you dual-wield speed and dual-wield full attacks. (I don't think Outward Spikes is a full attack, but regular Riposte is.) Tuitilo's Palm might not add quite as much deflection as some of the other options mentioned above, but may still be worth it if you want to do more than just riposting -- and it doesn't have the accuracy penalty that some of the other options have (plus, even if you aren't a monk, you can use Monastic Unarmed Training to scale its weapon stats). I've been playing with a Goldpact Paladin/Trickster with Gladiator's Sword and Tuitilo's Palm with high RES and PER (aiming for Champion's helm for a third riposte chance once I get that far). Still low levels (no Persistent Distraction yet), but it's been pretty effective, at least once I got Tuitilo's Palm. And it ripostes more often than I expected, though it depends on getting the enemies to attack me. I had to change my other tank's AI to slow it down so I could get the enemies to go aggro on me first. I have to run into battle first to draw aggo, so I have to wait to cast Mirrored Image and Sworn Enemy. If I cast those before drawing aggro, then too many enemies swarm my other characters, lowering the number of ripostes I get.

Yes, DA had a more advanced character generator ... but I'm just using their "head shot" part as an example of what could replace the portraits. And a "head shot" system would give more looks than the current portrait system. Especially for the races I mentioned. I mean, the "Male, Island, Amaua" (brown skin) has only one portrait option. I've been doing this for characters where I don't have a custom portrait I want to use (I'm not really a big fan of the existing portraits, so I rarely use those). During the level-up screen, it shows your character on the right side of the screen, and there's a button to zoom in. I take a screenshot of the head (after zooming in), and run it through the PoE1 option in the Baldur's Gate portrait generator (http://www.notra.fr/portrait), which gives you two of the sizes you need. Then I resize that image and crop it to get the other two sizes I need (I don't know how to do the one that looks like it's drawn on parchment, but it doesn't bother me to just use a regular image in its place). It's not great, since the head still comes out a bit small and fuzzy, but it's better than using a picture that looks nothing like my character.

Could you explain what -300% damage means in this context? The traditional CRPG definition would be that it does no damage at all, plus it heals you for twice as much damage as it would have caused. That's obviously not happening here. Is there a complete (and accurate) damage calculation formula available? (The last one I saw posted on the forum didn't actually work mathematically.) Thanks!