CottonWolf

In game there is no link between soul strength and might. I don’t know where this idea came from but it never made into the game. Might is clearly described as a measure of both physical and spiritual strength and in dialogues it was treated as strength. Deadfire already solved the problem of using might as strength check in dialogues by moving most of the checks to skills, with athletics replacing might in that instance. Not ideal, as it further separates different mechanics, but it does address this particular problem. Yeah, I was agreeing. I was saying, that sure, in theory it was that, but it never actually was in practice.

Yeah. What's even the point of the conjurer subclass then? I mean, if you want to be a gish, surely you multi Fighter/Conjurer or something? Then you summon your weapons as if you were a pure wizard.

This is certainly true, but I'm not sure that different stats forcing you to specialise in different parts of a class' skillset is a bad thing. Like, if you want to dump everything else, you could make a glass cannon ultimate damage druid if you wanted to, otherwise you're forced to specialise in shifting or spells. Seems like a fine trade-off to me. In principle, I agree with this, but the actual implementation of Might in dialogue never supported this reading. Might was always 'Do you even lift, bro", there was never any implication of non-physical strength given to the stat (that's actually always been on Resolve). I would have preferred that they keep Might and expand what it's used for in dialogue, but if they're not going to do that, I think changing it to Strength is the right choice.

Wait. Summoned weapons don't scale with power level? Why? That makes no sense at all.

Giving any character base Intelligence resistance probably isn't going to happen, because it would make Berserker the most overpowered thing imaginable. Do I want a huge amout of extra Mig and Con with nearly no appreciable downsides? Why yes, I think I do.

It should be no CC at all. That'd the cost of using a base level ability. If you can graze and still get CC with a tier 1, assuming that it has a correspondingly lower cast time, that'd be strictly better than the upgrade in a lot of circumstances.

That makes me feel old. It feels like yesterday...

I think the lesson here is that Frenzy is the best most fun barbarian ability and making it better is both cool and good.

It would be cool if that was an option for him but was dependent on you choosing the ending in PoE where he joined the underground Eothas sect. This is a really good idea. I mean, presumably they're already doing specific character decisions for other characters (whether Pallegina's a Five Suns or Kind Wayfarer), so letting Eder be a Fighter/Priest of Eothas if he joined the Night Market makes a lot of sense.

I have no evidence for this apart from that Pallegina's a soldier, but I reckon one of her potential combos will be Paladin/Fighter.

Yeah, the Resistance to X Affliction skills sound like they're too good to be general.

If you read the in game books, Eothas has always been more of a healing and vengeance god. He's never been down with passive things like defence, he's all action and reaction. Edit: Completely missed the second page.

Especially Fighter now. Though the ability to take dual weapon twice for a 40% attack speed increase is pretty cool. But nonetheless, if most Fighter passives are just repeats that's pretty terrible.

It also relies on you trusting the devs to make cool weapons of every type. In PoE1, some weapon type had almost no uniques, and this'll be even more obvious in Deadfire because of the changes to enchantment, so you can't just make a good weapon of that type. If you end up of a devoted of a weapon type that has very few uniques in the actual game, you're screwing yourself at character creation without even knowing it.

Yeah, I was really just being pedantic for the sake of it. I completely agree with your underlying point.

I feel the need to point out that the default cipher in the PoE1 character creator uses greatswords. It's basically the most standard cipher archetype.

Actually you'd probably be better going Unbroken instead of Devoted. They get some nice shield buffs and benefits to engagement. Once Devoted get fixed such that the actually only have one weapon proficiency and penalties to everything else they won't be the one stop shop that they currently are. Throw in a fix to the too fast recovery on many melee weapons and then we can see what is powerful. And i would stick with the Fighters are the masters of martial combat mantra. Paladins have lots of useful abilities why do they need to take from Fighters without having to multi? I don't see why you can't just multi-class? This is the defining feature of this new game, embrace it as its not going away. Because people don't want to lose their highest level talents. Which is why I suggested getting rid of single classed characters. At that point you're getting the flexibility and not losing anything. Everyone knows that the true Bleak Walker is the gun-adin.

Oh nice find! Does that also mean that when you multiclass a Berserker with any fighter and get the ability that gives you resistance against intellect afflictions that your frenzy will not confuse you anymore? It should shift down the confuse to a lesser tier - and since confuse is tier 1...? Yep. Someone tested it by artificially giving themselves the paladin skill that does it (Mental Fortress?), and it worked. It removes the debuff, meaning that there's a great synergy there. Here it is: Paladins have Mental Fortress (Resistance to Intellect Afflictions) as a passive ability. Unfortunately it's Power Level 4 so can't be reached by multiclass characters in the beta, so I can't test whether it works with the Berserker's Rage. EDIT: "AddAbility CHARNAME Mental_Fortress" allowed me to add the talent to my Berserker/Paladin. As far as I could tell it suppresses the confusion from the Berserker's Rage. It wasn't entirely obvious, since after using Rage a red "confusion" text over on my Berserker on screen, however mousing over the various buffs next to his portrait showed no sign of confusion, and his carnage attacks didn't hit his allies, so I think it works.

To be honest, at this point, what I'd do is throw out single class characters entirely and make every character multiclassed. Then have them reach the max power level in both classes and balance appropriately. Want the fighting skills? Be X/fighter. Want some magic? Be X/wizard. And so on.

A solution would be just to dump that. Then there's no benefit to having more PEN than the AR.

No joke. For something a subclass is based around it's *incredibly* bad. It should really provide a weak critter you choose the power of at chargen, but only provides a bonus when it's near you. Then you're playing the risk/reward game of keeping it close enough to provide the bonus but not too close that it gets targetted/AoEd. Then if it dies you can only resummon it with a long cast time. Potentially it dying would need to give you a bonded grief-style debuff for balance.

It might be less of an issue this time though, as the stats UI element doesn't have to be in the middle of the screen. Any of the shield logos could cover it.

Paladins have Mental Fortress (Resistance to Intellect Afflictions) as a passive ability. Unfortunately it's Power Level 4 so can't be reached by multiclass characters in the beta, so I can't test whether it works with the Berserker's Rage. If it does, a multiclassed Berserker/Bleak Walker's a really cool concept.

Also, you can't be from the Valian Republics, which makes it make even less sense. Hell, it hardly makes sense to be a Darcossi Paladini if you're not from Old Valia, but they backed themselves into a corner on that front by allowing it in Pillars.

I'd hazard a guess that all of the deties have multiple aspects in different cultures, it's just whether we've come across them in the games or not. I mean, it would be weird if whatever Rekke's people end up being have the same theological interpretations of the pantheon as the rest of the "known world".