Odd Hermit

I went the hound. I'm just a dog person. Have a little hound mutt sleeping on my feet right now.

Particularly wondering what Hiravias' looks like. I was planning on PC as Druid but I know Aloth's stats are weak, and was thinking I might switch and go Wizard and have Hiravias as Druid instead.

It's not worth building around, but it's a strong tool for druid. It absolutely wrecks at low levels before enchanted weapons begin to overtake the benefit of high base claw damage though. I am shredding through most early game encounters with ease using it.

I'm in a glass case of emotion

I like Pike for chanter - between the melee and the ranged, giving them both the chant buffs. Alternatively, anything you give a blunderbuss(+penetrating shot) or arquebus to can deal good ranged damage, chanter's not the best damage but with Ila Knocked they're a valuable part of a ranged group. I'd say use padded or no armor, max might, high int, mid-high dex depending on how far you're willing to drop con/per/res.

It's a tough call, I like GoG's options to DL stuff like soundtrack and art separately, but I went for steam to get pre-load and they auto-update patches and it's just overall more convenient for a new game. The DRM thing is a non-issue for me. Steam is not inconveniencing me like most bad DRM. I might buy a second copy on GoG at some point if it's ever really cheap on sale.

It improves all non min/maxed builds. Which includes probably every pre-made companion. And the latter, well, it's already that way right now, but you have to min/max to get any benefit from the attribute bonuses from a race. It encourages very specific races and attribute values. With diminishing returns and the race extension you get more interesting trade-offs at least. I'd definitely be more inclined to build hybrid characters if this were how it worked. It'd open up more varied build possibilities. Right now, for most builds it's just better to build purely offensively/defensively because the trade-off is assumed to be equal regardless of class/build's goal. But it's not. There should have a more weighted trade-off where at some point offense costs you more than defense or vice versa. Diminishing returns achieves this, as an option.

I'm not talking an increased cost for attributes. I'm talking an increased -> decreased value for what we have now. So take Dexterity and do something like this - 11 Dex gives +5% action speed, 12 gives +10%, 13 gives +14%, 14 gives +18% 15 gives +21% 16 gives +24% 17 gives +26% and every level thereafter gives another 2% (A very rough example obviously numbers can be tweaked) This wouldn't necessarily reduce min/maxing's value for offensive/defensive focused characters, but it'd make everything no min/maxed considerably less suckitude. And could have it work similarly for attributes under 10 as well, with penalties starting lower and then rising up to a point. And then, take racial attribute bonuses and have the base for this be raised by that bonus. This way they're not completely pointless unless you plan on taking above 18. So using Dex again, but with an Elf! 11 Dex gives +5% action speed, 12 gives +10%, 13 gives +15%, 14 gives +19% 15 gives +23% 16 gives +26% 17 gives +29% 18 gives +31% and every level thereafter gives another 2% So an Elf gets a bigger benefit from Dex at lower and higher values now rather than no benefit unless they want 19 Dex. Just feels... right to me. And it'd make race a more interesting choice.

I'm not disagreeing with your point, quite far from it, actually, and this just adds to my support of +AoE being placed on Resolve, but it is worth noting that the Aura Modals of the Paladin seems to stack with virtually everything. Which is also why Zealous Focus is so much better than Zealous Endurance (DT +5? If tank, cool, otherwise, haha, meh) and Zealous Charge (+Move.Speed in PoE? Aaahahahahaha). That delicious Accuracy bonus that cannot be replicated is just too nice to pass up, by comparison. Depends on party composition. If you only have 1 melee and it's your paladin tank, you're not going to huddle your ranged in his aura AoE, so zealous endurance is optimal just for the tank. Zealous Charge is definitely terrible though.

Well, they're 1 for 4, Kana is actually not terrible. But I feel like the best difficulty is something between hard and path of the damned, so maybe hard with terrible attribute spread on most of my characters will provide that.

General (non-weapon)accuracy I believe affects spells. Eldritch Aim definitely does - There are several spells that reduce enemy saves. Anything negatively affecting attributes will reduce saves in fact - which includes fairly common debuffs like dazed and frightened. But if those spells are low accuracy you may not succeed with them, heh.

I've found a few successful monk builds. All feel a bit lackluster at low levels though, and in the beta low level is actually lower mid-levels. I tried many different tanky monk builds 'cause I really wanted it to be as good as Paladin, it just isn't - at least not until you get Duality of Mortal presence for the +10 to all defenses which comes at level 7 and even then Paladin is ahead in deflection and has 3 extra DR from Zealous Endurance potentially. Monk has a few things that make it compete and have its own unique strengths though, mainly control abilities and reflective damage(particularly soul mirror). I also think they're more interesting to play. First build I had success with is a Monk tank built around Force of Anguish. Max out Perception, Resolve, keep a decent amount of Int as well. Spend all of your wounds to prone stuff. Take the no-brainer deflection talents: Cautious Attack, Weapon and Shield Style. Second is a hybrid tank/damage character that swaps weapon sets depending on situation. Uses turning wheel for high burn damage on attacks, rather than spending wounds on force of anguish. Takes high might instead of intellect, and picks up Rooting Pain for AoE melee damage. This character will be a little less high on defenses and will need more support, but does significantly more damage than a normal tank build. Personally, I haven't found a good use for a purely damage focused monk though. They have to take damage to use their special abilities, so they need to not just be able to take hits, but they need to intentionally get hit. If they're not a fairly tanky character this can be a complication - being wound starved or being knocked out if you can't find a happy medium.

I don't this is a Paladin issue I think it's an issue with most classes not having control over their accuracy in any meaningful way. Some classes do get talents or spells to use to ensure or at least dramatically increase chance of important spells/abilities landing when they need it, others just don't. Very noticeable on Path of the Damned, really, where stacking accuracy efficiently makes more impact. Sensuki would probably say we need accuracy back on Perception but I feel like any attribute you put accuracy on becomes too important. Ideally the game should have some more creative/temporary accuracy boosts for prioritization. Being able to spend actions/resources to set-up nigh-guaranteed results feels more interesting and tactical than just dealing with lots of graze damage/duration and spamming.

Skaen or Magran(just for Arquebus) is best. Skaen can give a decent amount of extra damage using any weapon with the sneak attack. It's much better than a nerfed version of some odd spell from the Druid or Wizard selection. I'd rather get feat-like bonuses than such underwhelming 1/rest spells.

I think the problem here could be that you're using a bow. Bow's suck. And Swift Aim probably doesn't help.

Fighter is fine as a tank but Paladin is optimal IMO. Fighters are better damage but they won't have Paladin level defenses. Why do you say Paladins are the optimal tanks? Fighters and paladins start with the same base endurance/health and deflection and fighters get a bunch of abilities like guardian stance, defender, vigerous defense and so on that do wonders for its and its party's ability to shrug off damage. It's because of their defenses(Fort/Reflex/Will). You can have high enough deflection on other classes, but if you're getting debuffs stacked on you, there goes your deflection. Paladin has access to high saves from the start - Monk defenses can get high too but they're a very hard class to build and they're weak at low levels IMHO.

Depends on the rest of the party composition. Ciphers bring strong single target ranged weapon damage. Wizards can specialize for AoE ranged damage. Wizards have more versatile/stronger spells and can chain cast. Ciphers have unlimited phenomenal cosmic power as long as they keep generating focus anyway. Ciphers have some very strong "pulling" options which can waste enemy resources. Cipher is a bit more durable. I prefer Cipher overall and they feel more of a "staple" class in my party compositions to me, but I took both in a PoD run through and they each pulled their weight. A Druid is currently superior to Wizard but they're balancing them both a bit before live so we'll see how things turn out.

Wolf best pet IMO for the potential kiting and to get on squishy targets fast. If your wolf goes around harassing casters you can often have it run around while they fail AoE spells @ it because it's moving too fast. For hard hitting melee enemies you can of course just run in circles. Ranger is a very, very micro-heavy class 'cause it's like 2 characters - even though they don't have a ton of abilities the pet's strength is distraction. Most of my experiences with ranger have been quite poor but they get relatively better when you build them for path of the damned due to accuracy being a much stronger bonus against the higher deflection enemies, and because the pet has much more application when you're micromanaging fights more carefully. I've had a similar experience with Wizard, as their Eldritch Aim spell is amazing on PoD and a lot of their debuffs are more substantial since you actually want/need to lower enemy defenses more rather than simply nuking first and then mopping up survivors after.

Fighter is fine as a tank but Paladin is optimal IMO. Fighters are better damage but they won't have Paladin level defenses. Orlan(Wild) and Aedyr.

Hatchet and Large Shield for pure tank is what I used. 2h for damage - or I've actually had a ranged Paladin just to give +6 accuracy to my casters. What was your attribute distribution? What kind of armor did you use? For my Path of the Damned Paladin tank I used: 6 MIG 16 CON 6 DEX 20 PER 10 INT 20 RES I normally don't take much constitution but I'd figured for PoD this character wouldn't be doing anything significant with mid-high might anyway due to poor accuracy and no damage talent/abilities. His job is to sit somewhere and not die while things beat on him. Occasionally use a Lay on Hands or Liberating Exhortation.

The male death godlike's "face casings" just give me a certain female body part vibe...

Thing is, it's not a PnP game it's a CRPG. They can't create enough use for oddball uses for every attribute outside of combat. And it's harder to get into roleplaying a flawed character since a video game just isn't as open and flexible. You enter combat frequently and you're going to be at a noticeable disadvantage without necessarily having the means to counteract that whether it's leveling slowly on lower level / easier things or acquiring enough currency to buy gear to make up for an inefficient build. And I would say you definitely could have excellent eyesight and be inaccurate in a fight. But arguing over such specifics isn't the point. What the attributes do right now could easily just be given to us unpackaged without the labels - you want longer durations? spend points on duration. Doesn't need to make your character have high intellect. Then we could indeed pick something like skills to apply to dialogues and other checks. It's probably not going to happen, I just see it as a more ideal system. I'm not feeling the attributes thing, they're muddled, tangled up with skills, and somewhat inconsistent feeling.

If a game is mostly combat focused it doesn't make sense to sacrifice combat ability for the occasional dialogue option. Plus some classes got away with good dialogue and combat ability. Sorcerers for example, with a Paladin dip for wtf saving throws.

I like Tenuous Grasp, you can start many fights by having them kill one of their own. It's kinda cheesy though, as it can be cast outside of combat and out of sight to solo some groups of enemies.