PrimeJunta

I never did this btw... OTOH I start-scummed the hey out of it to get godly stats for the PC.

There's a lot to enjoy beyond that though. While I'm no Boeroer or Torm51, I have gotten a tremendous amount of fun from experimenting with different builds, party compositions, and tactics. Pillars has depth that few modern games do. Take Shadowrun Returns, for example -- I enjoyed those a lot too, but after playing through them once or twice, I don't find much to come back to.

What do you care? Whatever the market for it is, you're clearly not in it. Edit: and now, I'm done with this discussion. FYI, I also won't be replying to any further requests for help from you.

I had a lot of sympathy for your predicament up to this point, but passive-aggressively insulting people who are willing to help you out kind of killed that. Out of curiosity, do you watch TV? If so, how much? There are scads and scads and scads of RPG-lites that are easy to learn, don't require much thought, time, or effort to master, and provide plenty of entertainment. Why not play one of them rather than calling to dumb down one of the few games which try to cater to a somewhat more hardcore crowd? (Also, I would like respec gone altogether. It cheapens the entire game by trivialising your character-building choices.)

Meh, I'm not sure about the companion interaction/relationship thing. When done seriously it tends to skew the entire game around it; BioWare's games are a good example of this. I think it helps keep the game more focused if companion relationships sort of just happen over the course of the game, rather than being something that have to be actively pursued. And romances, of course, ruin evvvverything.

I think the faster phrases thing at least is welcome. I rarely got to use the higher-level invocations because I didn't manage to rack up enough phrases during a fight. Damn thing was over too soon.

Durance was written by Chris Avellone before he left Obsidian, and his style is noticeably different from the characters the others wrote. Edér and Kana are fairly light-hearted. If you don't like his dialog, just ignore him or drop him from the party (and don't recruit the Grieving Mother, she's more of the same). Avellone made Planescape: Torment by the way, which is regarded by many (myself included) as one of the all-time classics among computer games. It was very much referenced in the Kickstarter, and a lot of PS:T fans were a bit disappointed the writing in Pillars wasn't more Torment-y. BG didn't have much dialog at all, and most of it was pretty straightforward plot exposition. BG2 had a quite a bit more with the companion quests; some of those were fairly wordy, and a few were actually a bit on the "heavy" side. I think the two games blur together in a lot of people's minds, and they credit BG1 for stuff that's actually only in BG2. I'd surmise the "dialog" people remember from BG1 is actually mostly barks and interjections by party members, notably Minsc and Jaheira. But then there was Jan Jansen and his turnips, bless his gnomish heart.

Level 5 is pretty low for those quests. Also if you think they're hard, don't attempt to complete the faction quests any time soon. Both the Knights and the Dozens' line finishes with some really tough fights. I'm on level 5 now and am getting smeared all over the walls by the final Knights fight (Path of the Damned difficulty though). Decided to level and gear up a bit before finishing, although I really want the reward... You do need to experiment, but it's ultimately not that hard. Read the descriptions, think about what they say, form a hypothesis, and test it. It's mostly about two things really -- finding the right spell to attack an enemy's weak spot, and finding synergies between spells and other abilities. Combusting Wounds for example synergises well with spells that do damage over time, but it useless against enemies which are immune or resistant to fire. That sort of thing. Builds aren't actually all that critical in Pillars. Tactics are far more crucial. You can play with just about any party specced any which way, and if you play it to the party's strengths and don't do quests too early, the game will be pretty easy really, a few boss fights notwithstanding. They're by no means neutral, optimised builds are a good deal more powerful than sub-optimal ones. However don't get too hung up on the builds, focus on how you play the game instead. If you're bad at tactics, you'll die a lot even with a perfectly fine-tuned, optimised party -- and if you're good at them, Normal and Hard are easy even with a really bad party.

Yeah. IME tactics are where it's at. I've experimented with a whole bunch of parties, from traditional to themed to single-class only, and all of them work, you just have to find the right way to play them. The really weird ones usually end up being laughably easy most of the time, and then hitting a brick wall of difficulty when first encountering something they can't deal with (but usually there are consumables that will get that job done). (Case in point: the all-ranger party. Select-all plus auto-attack will turn almost everything into a bloody paste really quickly, but when they first encounter ogre druids... owie.)

Quite. As an addendum though -- you can get wizards do serious weapon damage by giving them WF: Noble or WF: Adventurer, then stacking all the talents you can get to pump Blast, direct weapon damage, and armour penetration, and go to town with a wand, sceptre, or rod.

Er, isn't that normal operating procedure for summons in the BG's? Stinking Cloud is crazy OP in BG1 as it is, even without the summons. That plus archers will clear most encounters fast.

Yeah, the DVD thing was clearly a bad idea, as they obviously don't consider supporting it a very high priority. If I was Obsidian, I'd offer DVD backers a free upgrade/switch to GoG or Steam. With GoG at least the DRM thing shouldn't be an issue as it doesn't have DRM, and they get updates within hours or at most a day or so from Steam backers. Maybe petition for that?

Look for posts by @Boeroer and @Torm51. They've got tons of highly effective builds, ranging from the sensible (Darcozzi Forward Observer) to absurd (barbarian raging away with a magic rapier which steals status effects to make its Rage, Defiance, plus any other buffs you want to stack on it to last through the entire fight). My personal take? All of the classes are good, and build optimisation isn't ultra-critical (although it most definitely makes a difference). Tactics matter more: how to keep your squishies from getting squished, how to get through enemy defences. And for that, crowd control is king.

Two words: hired adventurers.

Yep, Pillars takes time and effort. You need to read the dialogs with thought to understand what's going on with the stories, not just click through them, and you need to understand the mechanics to be able to win fights. If you don't have the time or the inclination to do that, then it's not the game for you -- and there's absolutely no shame in that. That said, it sounds to me that you actually want to enjoy the game, and all you need is a little leg-up to start winning fights. On that assumption: What level are you? What difficulty are you playing on? The two quests you mention? I got wrecked when first attempting them, and this after about a hundred hours of the beta. They're tough, optional encounters. If you go into them early, they're pretty hard even if you know the mechanics really well. There's plenty of easier stuff around that you can do first. Pillars -- like BG and BG2 for that matter -- is like that. You get access to a lot of content early on, and to begin with some of it will be above your pay grade. So one "basic" thing to do is that if you get beat up, go look somewhere else. If you get beat up there too, go look even more. Also, note that difficulty mode (other than Path of the Damned) doesn't affect enemy stats, just group composition. This means that the bosses in optional quests (like the two you mentioned) are exactly as tough at all difficulties. In practice this means that difficulty spikes more on Easy than the harder difficulties. Here's a list of some quests to do before the ones you're attempting -- names not official, these are off the top of my head but if you've done them you'll know what I mean, and it's by no means exhaustive: Second, here's "Cole's notes" version of the mechanics: if you think about it, read the spell and ability descriptions with it in mind, and apply it, you will start winning: Every attack uses Accuracy against a Defence. The Defences are Deflection, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will. To consistently Hit or Crit, your Accuracy will need to be higher than the defence you're targeting. Martial attacks (melee or ranged) target Deflection. Magical attacks, traps, etc. target the other defences. To hit a hard-to-hit enemy, target its weakest Defence. This will often reduce other Defences, letting you do more direct damage. To avoid getting hit by an enemy, figure out which Defence it is targeting, and strengthen that, e.g. with a spell from Durance, food, a scroll, or a potion. You can see which Defence your attack targets from the ability description. Once you've fought a type of critter a bit, you will see its Defences in the pop-up at top left, as well as a hit chance above it.

Yeah. I'm in the no-respec camp, and would like to state for the record that merely knowing the option is there cheapens the experience for me, by trivialising the choices I make when levelling up. And no, I don't use it. Not to a "WHAA it's ruined forever and ever and I'll never play it again" extent, but nevertheless.

Zahua rules. Voice acting is also great. I get the impression that he's entirely aware of how funny some of his lines are, he just delivers them in that perfect deadpan style. Not a huge fan of the Devil. Nice concept but somehow fails to get off the ground. Also, I don't particularly care for rogues. But then I don't particularly care for monks either -- aesthetically, not mechanically, Pillars monks are great to play -- but Zahua still rules.

Not saying. If you're making a tanky paladin, you're over-investing in Might. It will affect Lay On Hands and the other healing abilities, but the high Int which extends the duration will make up for it. So moving a few points from that to buff Reflex is not a bad idea, and yes, it is pretty important for a tanky character as a lot of special attacks target Reflex. Note that you can also pick talents on level-up which add +10 to a defence. There are usually other talents that are more valuable, but if you really feel it's lacking, that helps. And of course there are plenty of items you can distribute around your party to either buff the strengths or compensate for weaknesses. So ultimately the abilities aren't such a big deal. Maxing out Mechanics is not required, you can safely put a few points into getting some other abilities up to 3 or 4 or so. You'll just need to use lockpicks every once in a while, but there are plenty, and you might run into some traps you'll have to walk around rather than untrap. Having 2 or 3 as a base (from class and background) helps though.

Congratulations! Durance is actually one of the most powerful party members: the buffs will turn a tough fight into a cakewalk and a near-impossible one into something manageable. They're large-area and relatively long-duration too. Most of the time, you shouldn't need the heals: use his spells to avoid taking damage in the first place.

Funny you should mention this: my PnP homebrew project does just this. It's a classless system where XP (called juju) is thrown into the party pool, and the players get to decide how to spend it. They can divide it up evenly, reward someone for extra-good gameplay, spend it on shared assets, or use it in gameplay. I think it works pretty well actually. (It also has anarcho-Trotskyite space Communists.)

Objection! In Marxist utopia, everything is better.

At least I think she'll be entirely workable in that role without the paladin buff. Use priestly buffs instead, debuff enemy Accuracy with the druid and wizard, and find ways of getting her out of trouble if she gets into it. (Paladins are freakin' awesome by the way. Probably my favorite class in fact. They're a real "force multiplier" -- with a paladin onboard, everybody else just works better to start with, and s/he can get them out of trouble like nothing else.)

I've mostly played with damage-built fighters and don't use tank-and-spank tactics. That way they're moderately robust front-liners that do a lot of damage. Thing is, barbarians are also moderately robust front-liners that do a lot of damage, except you have to use their per-encounter talents actively to keep them standing. Sure, there are differences, but from where I'm at they're more differences of style rather than substance. So the rogue, barb, and fighter kind of blur into each other, and I fail to see what's gained by keeping them separate classes rather than letting any martial-oriented character pick what they like from all their talents. Yes, it would likely make for more powerful builds especially at higher levels, but then martial characters tend to fall behind spell-casters at that point, so that might even be good, balance-wise.

Mechanical, mostly. But now that you name it, also narrative. The separation made more sense actually when the fighter was as it was originally conceived -- a dedicated tank. Trouble is, that fighter wasn't anywhere near as much fun as it is currently. Right now, you can use a fighter as a basis for any "martial" role in the party -- tank, front-line damage, ranged damage -- which makes the rogue and the barb redundant. I don't like prestige classes at all, so, no. Give me talent trees with seriously cool abilities down the branches instead.

Reinforcing Exhortation is a paladin ability that temporarily buffs a comrade. Bittercut is a pretty powerful magic sabre you can find. Rogues aren't as robust as fighters or paladins, and need to be actively managed or they'll go down pretty fast. There are lots of ways you can do this -- equip them with items that let them get out of trouble (e.g. boots of speed), give them talents that let you do this (Escape, Shadowing Beyond), buff them (Reinforcing Exhortation), and so on. They won't survive for long in the front line without such help.