NotDumbEnough

5 phrases by default, and only 4 on a Skald, which is really really cheap.

The downside for Chanters is that they cannot alpha strike in the same way as Priests/Druids/Wizards or even Ciphers. All of these can use their spells straight out of stealth for disgusting combos, but Chanters only get all their phrases when the enemy sees them.

Phrases are worth a lot more than most martial resources IMO, and most invocations are significantly more powerful than druid/priest/wizard spells of the same tier. Her Tears Fell Like Rain and Eld Nary will both end fights with just 1-2 casts which even the most powerful druid/priest/wizard spells are not capable of achieving, except maybe Great Maelstrom, but that has friendly fire and can't be casted over and over without empowering or an outside source of Brilliant. Cipher spells on the other hand tend to be weaker than the corresponding priest/druid/wizard spells other than for applying mental afflictions, in which case it is superior (e.g. Secret Horrors vs. Divine Terror on a priest).

Really? If anything, I find that enemies pretty much never break engagement when I play, so much so that anything that only applies when enemies disengage is almost completely useless, unless I use a very specific debuff that makes them break engagement. It's not just Eder, enemies refuse to disengage even if the person engaging them hits like a wet noodle. Also, I'm fairly glad that pre-buffing is not a thing in this game, it's not fun to wave your hands for 30 seconds before every fight and go in at full strength. Without pre-buffing you actually have to make conscious decisions on which buffs need to come first. Personally I don't think the developers took that philosophy far enough, as you can still cast a lot of offensive spells from stealth, so you can annihilate lots of encounters by syncing up multiple offensive spells at the same time once you can access powerful high tier spells. I'm currently playing with house rules that I can't cast anything from stealth, only use weapon attacks, otherwise most encounters are completely trivialized.

I think the worst example of how spell reflection works was when I fought Sigilmaster Auranic: I had Xoti use Symbol of Eothas on one of the sigils, and it absolutely destroyed her with the reflection. I'm still not sure how exactly it works.

Even if we're comparing high level characters, the high tier abilities for spellcasters especially are bonkers. Currently I can do a Wall of Many Colors (Trickster, me) + Call of Rymrgand (Xoti) + Great Maelstrom (Tekehu) + Wall of Many Colors #2 (Aloth) combo from stealth, and it isn't hard to sync it so that all these abilities drop at the same time. This instantly annihilates 90% of encounters, and is pretty much exclusive to single class characters.

Personally I mostly see multiclassing as productive when (and only when) the two halves have a sum of greater than simply two half-characters put together. For example, a Streetfighter/Soulblade will get a lot of use out of Soul Annihilation, and is completely unique from how you might play either a single class Streetfighter or Soulblade. A Monk/Druid on the other hand is probably not a great multiclass outside of using Helwalker to power up your spells, but even then is it worth giving up Great Maelstrom from an SC druid? Probably not.

Some of the high tier caster food gives you damage bonuses. Personally I almost never empower or rest though, so it's basically a one-off cost and not that expensive for me.

Would it be possible to further raise the wound cap beyond 10? Say, to 15. It would be goofy but an appropriate compensation for difficult wound generation.

I had a Devoted/Helwalker run that I quit early due to how busted it was, as Unbending is truly broken with high intellect. The hit to crit was also very nice for chaining Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming, and Mob Stance would also start crit chains, often annihilating enemies from full hp.

Ultimately miss-to-graze brute force kills aren't something that are all that common I think. Consider that this is going to be a fighter ability, who already have numerous abilities to increase their accuracy. Unless you are deliberately playing very poorly such as not upgrading your weapons, I don't see it being game-breaking.

No they don't. Try using Power Strike or something. You get exactly the penetration/accuracy/damage bonus that the tooltip states, whereas these give you additional bonuses just for being a certain level ability, just like Fireball and other spells. Also most martial abilities only get additional damage from power level, whereas Riposte, Mob Stance etc. get additional accuracy and penetration just as spells do. That makes sense for spells, since you can't upgrade them like weapons so you need to scale them one way or another. With these triggered attacks though you scale them twice, thus double dipping, since they take into account both power level scaling and weapon tier scaling. For monks this is particularly important. Additional PL makes their fists stronger, AND makes their triggered attacks stronger too. With community patch, try using Forbidden Fist while near death on a Death Godlike as a single class monk that picks Prestige and has an Acute inspiration. You will do simply stupid amounts of damage because your weapon (your fists) and the Forbidden Fist ability are both scaling at the same time. With the community patch the Forbidden Fist ability is also treated like a spell, by the way.

No it just seems to be triggered attacks that you don't directly command. Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming also have bonus accuracy and penetration due to their base level. I should also mention that they benefit from power level too, including accuracy and power level and penetration. Basically they're attacks in the form of spells.

I think WotW would be slightly less OP if all your attacks didn't gain extra penetration and accuracy as if it was a spell. Riposte, Mob Stance and Retaliation all do something similar but they are much more passive in nature and you can't force them to trigger. Or remove the invisibility so that you can't use it with the cape that lets you stun on hit. I wonder if it would also mean that you could get hit while you use WotW.

I think something like "+10 accuracy to next attack if you miss/graze with your weapon" would be unique and more interesting if it's possible to implement.

It is only controllable in BPM.

It seems that Tricksters can go around scaring people with Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage without breaking invisibility, at least for Enduring Shadows. Note the Backstab here applying after the RRV proc.

Yes, but that is the problem. On higher difficulties (I play with PotD upscaled, and lately I am using Deadly Deadfire's scaling component to scale enemies even further, but not beyond my own level), many enemies such as fighter types are really hard to take down quickly when they keep up with you in level. A class that relies on quickly killing the enemy does not work too well when the enemy simply does not die fast. Of course you can use Leap and go kill somebody that is easier to hit, but then you are often out of reach of most of your party's buffs, and will likely die quite quickly without support.

Brute Force seems to be only particularly useful against enemy wizard and rogue types (low fortitude and lots of abilities that boost deflection), as a lot of bosses tend to have overwhelmingly high fortitude due to high constitution, with maybe the sole exception of the Oracle of Wael. As for action speed, both wizards and druids have very convenient self boosts to action speed, so I don't find it particularly necessary.

Personally, I think the problem with Barbarian sprint abilities is that it competes with the leap abilities. Leap costs twice as much but comes with a useful stun, is faster, can be used from stealth, and bypasses all body blocking, which the sprint abilities don't really fix. As for why people consider Barbarians a weak multiclass -- I think it's mostly because they lack tools against particularly hard to hit or durable foes, other than running or jumping away.

It seems that the game discerns between flanking from Perception afflictions/Phantom Foes and actually physically flanking. The former counts as a debuff while the latter stacks with everything. This means that the usage of certain abilities are actually quite nuanced, so for example you want to physically flank the enemy before you use Confounding Blind, or else you'll have two deflection penalties that don't stack with each other.

Would bump fighter up a tier for multiclassing, Intuitive is incredibly strong especially for crit reliant builds, lots and lots of concentration so you're nearly immune to interrupts, permanent uptime +20 all defenses is just very nice in general. If we're considering subclasses, some of them are more worth single-classing than their peers, such as Trickster (Wall of Many Colors is insane), Beckoner (really want extra PL for lengthier summons, extra animated weapon and the dragon are both good, +1 pen chant is the most realistic way to buff summons penetration beyond Animancy Cat), Ascendant (can spam Time Parasite to have ridiculous action speed). Same for multiclassing (e.g. Devoted).

Blinded will actually retroactively remove all effects of gaze abilities. e.g. If you use Gaze of the Adragan first, then follow up with Chill Fog, it will remove the petrify effect.

I've tried both Tactician/Skald and Devoted (Sabres)/Skald. Honestly Tactician does not work well with Skald, The -5 acc/-1 pen against anything not threatened by a teammate is very significant. You'll also want to rely on Her Tears Fell Like Rain for most of your damage later on -- needless to say this means that you are easy to flank if you are using it at point blank to shotgun the enemy with multiple projectiles, and you do NOT want to be confused the instant before you finish the invocation, because it hits hard enough to OHKO your own teammates.

I believe the plague ship encounters can kill off your companions if you don't treat it, as in there is different text for tossing each of the main companions overboard. Perhaps they worked the concept into that instead.