morhilane

Choreographed drinking is much better.

Than you'll have to explain to me how my 92 Endurance Monk with cloth on survived a 90 crits without his endurance turning all red last week in v435.

The Monk is the best class to mitigate high burst damage via the damage/wound conversion. Crits fill up the wound buckets and you get to use lots of powered abilities because of it. They are higher maintenance than the Fighters though, so not for everyone. They are also weakened if they aren't getting hit unless you use the self-wound ability. They need wounds to shine and they need to get hit to generate wounds.

They aren't harder than in previous BB version (except the one where everything was super easy). Actually, they are easier than in the earlier BB release which is why their are more of then now (you used to be wrecked by 3 of them, now they are like 6 per packs on normal).

In other games both would be labelled as quest. It's hard to say what is the difference in the game based on the BB, but a guess would be that task are supposed to be short/simple while quests are longer with more options.

That's not entirely true. You can "complete" all the game's dialogues without reading them, for example. Or you can unearth all the books without actually reading them. Especially if it's not your first run of the game, like with speedrunners (which is perhaps why Cantousent brought up speedrunning? *shrug*). They already know how the dialogue goes, so even if they're doing a "100%" run, they're still skipping through dialogues and not really fiddling with much little stuff at all. Basically, there's still a difference between "doing" everything in the game, and taking your time with everything in the game. For what it's worth... It is true in my book, when I decide to do a completionist run I read all codex, books, dialogues, present in the game. I even harvest everything I can find. I do these after I played the game once (or even twice like in the case of BG2). I usually do these with the help of wiki/guide to be sure I haven't missed anything as well.

There are abilities that revive downed character (like the Paladin's Reviving Exhortation) and there are a few spells/abilities that kill (set to 0 health) a character when it reach 0 stamina (like the Cipher's Disintegrate power).

Yes and I guess so. The game has permadeath if you health reach 0 (endurance reaching 0 just makes you unconscious). There is a checkbox that somewhat disable that for party members, but it just give you one more chance by granting the maimed status, if health reach 0 while maimed that character is still permadead. While maimed endurance will regen, but you have 1 health and debuff to offense and defense. Only rest remove that status.

Completionist means completionist, if you are not reading dialogs or books and aren't trying to unearth all the game secrets you are not doing a completionist playthrough. No, no. I agree with you, totally. All i say is that the Bryy's concern seemed to be whether the time doing so should be counted as time needed to achieve a completionist run or not. Like i said, to me, since it's part of the fun, and even if it's not actually playing, i would count this time when measuring the game lenght. But i think what he says is not stupid since reading is not actually playing (e.g. solving quests, looting, clicking, fighting, crawling, and so on). The question here is NOT whether we should read books in a completionist run, but whether the TIME spent doing so is to be counted as playing time. That's all i guess. If it is done in the gameworld while playing the game it should be counted as part of the game session and thus the time it took to play the game. The in-game books are there to be read while playing, they are part of the game. Saying that, I expect most PoE players aren't going to read them.

Completionist means completionist, if you are not reading dialogs or books and aren't trying to unearth all the game secrets you are not doing a completionist playthrough.

For the same reason Disintegrate in the IE games was available to both players and enemies (it had a chance to destroy loot). Also, Pillars of Eternity spells power level isn't based on their spell level, in most cases first level spells deal as much damage as later spells do. Although, that is pre-release balance, who knows what the latest build will have.

I find it amusing that people don't think the spell is going to be used against their party. There are class abilities in the game to "wake up" unconscious friend/foes in combat, but it work only if they still have health. I don't see any reason as to why enemies wouldn't use them. On top of it, the game has permadeath if health reach 0 for your party members, there is a checkbox to make it that the first time the character reach 0 health they are just maimed, but reaching 0 health while maimed still result in permadeath anyhow. One disintegrate can either make perma kill or maim a party member.

I've seen similar things in old castle ruins. Exactly why or if that was really a thing (or just a result of the ruins being ruins) I can't say for sure, but it could just be part of the architecture, I can see some (debatable) legit reasons to have it like that if you want unobstructed access. Stables and some buildings still have those, but they come with doors. Remove the doors and you get a big window step out to your doom too. They are used to lift things directly to the second floor, might have been the same for those ruins.

In desperate times comes desperate crazy measures.

A pet peeve of mine, this should include benefices, licenses fee and office cost (renting/electricity/hardware/etc) which is usually estimated via the rule of tomb salary*2.

Phrases don't all have the same duration. The lingering phrase will overlap the next one that the Chanter start to chant. In general, 2 (one lingering, one being chanted) is all that is going to be overlapping. Right, right. The real question underlying this is "how much do I need to pump Intelligence to get (two / three) phrases stacked at once." If there are edge cases where having a 19 Int will let things stack more vs. maybe it's better to just have a 15 Int because that gets you two at once and that's all you need. General rules for phrases, they linger half the time they take to speak and Int increase the linger time. Basically to have 3, you need to start with a very long phrase and follow by two shorts ones. Although, in the BB with Int 22, I haven't seen more than two stacking. The UI also doesn't allow to display more than two phrases overlapping.

Spear is one handed in POE and I don't think it is a reach weapon - pike or quarterstaff are the only "reach" weapons according to wiki - seems like Pollaxe should be as well. I'm pretty sure I used spears while standing behind BB Figher to attack the same enemy he does in an older BB release. And spears has a "s" because my character was dual wielding them.

Yes you can. I just tried them all with a quarterstaff and they all did work. Weren't some of them unarmed only? <= Haven't played the Monk much

Phrases don't all have the same duration. The lingering phrase will overlap the next one that the Chanter start to chant. In general, 2 (one lingering, one being chanted) is all that is going to be overlapping.

Can you stealth in combat? You're not simply thinking of stealth attacks? I was actually thinking of opening a fight with backstab while in stealth, but if the ability is "combat only", yep that doesn't work.

Doesn't backstab work if you are in stealth? At least, that is the impression I had.

Rogues/Monks have the most actives, but there are a few melee active talents that any classes can take at level up as well.

He said maybe. They need to fix the BB and it's not a priority because the BB isn't what needs to be released in 3 week to everyone. I personally don't mind another BB if it means less bug in the real game.

Prosperous, Medreth and his gang is still alive in your screenshot!

Yup, stealth is both stealth and search.