Odd Hermit

My character is experiencing something like ground hog day, he keeps repeating the same ~week over and over again. Eventually he started to go mad. He's also developed an extreme hatred of beetles so he's chosen armor piercing weapons for his mercenaries to pierce their thick shells in an endless cycle of revenge.

1. I think the problem is that DT and DT penetration are too strong right now and they're basically the name of the game. Which is amusingly somewhat historically accurate if what I've read about medieval combat's progression - Stronger armor brought on the phasing out of lighter/slashing weapons and in came the bludgeoning and armor piercing weapons. But it doesn't really work in a game where you're trying to make all options viable. 2. I disagree, I think PoE has the mechanics to make 1h very viable and interesting. I think since you have a free off hand, you should get bonuses to spell/ability/item use speed. They could also introduce some abilities exclusive to the style, like Dirty Fighting which could be a conal AoE blind using powder or whatever. It might not get fixed up by release but there's potential and I don't think it should be ignored. 3. Yeah, all the damage % boosting talents and enchants make taking higher base damage weapons even more of a no-brainer. Speed multipliers could have similar issues though. I don't think there's a simple solution, just trial and error tweaks/number crunching. Of course, trying to make damage output the same across the board could make things a bit boring. That's why I like things such as the suggested Dirty Fighting ability. Some larger two handers could get a knock down attack from choosing 2h style. Pikes already have their unique range advantage built in. You get the idea - game needs more unique benefits for each weapon and style.

Hire a level 1 adventure. Make them a ranger. Choose culture Rautuai(Arbalest) or Old Vaila(Crossbow) Take their gear, dismiss or kill them. @ 250cp per, it's a steal. Can upgrade them with your starting mats as well. Was a bit tired of making due with War Bows, this time I've got a whole party packing 4 Arbalests and 2 Crossbows from the start. The opening sneak attack focus fire is devastating.

I'm definitely going to take a Chanter, but multiple Chanters is weaker than multiple Druids. They make a good second or third melee, for Thrice Was Wronged + a couple good chant buffs. I see them as a less tanky but better damage/buff version of the Paladin, they're very passive other than the occasional invocation. Yeah, Thrice Was Wronged does hit like a truck, but it's something you have to build up to. It's also conal, albeit a large cone, but it's just not as good as a Druid that can cast several high damage, large AoEs that are easier to place in the time it takes to build up chants to use a single Thrice Was Wronged. Druids can drop serious damage at the beginning of a fight, sometimes killing things outright. Granted, sometimes it's better to wait for a few buffs, but Druids can also open with a massive AoE tanglefoot to control the field giving your party time to buff up a bit too. You can drop the AoE and even drop out of sight for a bit to buff if against ranged enemies as well. I don't see them as competing roles and I don't see Chanter as a good class to stack more than one or two of.

Blunderbuss is my choice of ranged weapon for rogue, with penetrating shot and gunner. Rogues have some class-specific modals but they come with worse downsides IMO, making your rogue super-fragile isn't worth the damage increase. That said, I don't think I'll be taking a rogue for my party. Cipher IMO is a better choice, more CC and stronger debuffs benefit the whole party. Cipher +draining whip and a blunderbuss is a great combination too.

Yeah it'd be nice if priests were tweaked slightly more toward the "Cleric" side. I personally like them to be in the middle, for best PBAoE/healing range access on the whole party. So far I haven't had a priest drop though, except the one time a character's pathing went awry and he ran into an already spotted trap while we were in combat near it. :/ If they had Wizard's Wand/Scepter/Rod talents that'd be perfect, but I've been using Crossbow/Pike on mine, and eventually I'd go with Arbalest/Pike and take the Soldier focus. That way I can swap between melee and range, but have the extra reach in melee to not put the priest too much in the thick of things. Druid is more offensive, but I see Chanters as a defensive melee class personally. They have many conal invocations that make you want them on the front line. I use mine as back-up tank along with a Fighter.

Yeah I'm planning on not taking a wizard at this point unless they get some changes. Wizards still have some noteworthy spells, but since the game has perma-death for individual characters - without resurrection/raise dead as far as I know, I'm going to want to skip anything that drops like a stone when you make a mistake here and there. I've had some trap deaths due to pathing being retarded and characters not going around the un-disarmable traps but wizard so far is the only class I've had drop dead in combat on hard difficulty anyway.

Thing is, they get massive AoEs, yet they don't do less damage than the small AoEs of other classes. And the large AoEs combined with int let you get a lot of AoE damage where other classes would struggle to avoid friendly fire. They're also significantly more durable than Wizards which matters. In my 3 Wizard playthrough that I didn't finish, I actually had a wizard perma-die from an Adra Beetle. :/

Ugh I hope not. One thing I don't like in the BB is how limited I am at the beginning. I think at least the basic weapons of all types should be available. If I start a character out with a Soldier Focus yet can't access an Arbalest or Arquebus for a long time, that just sucks. And I'm not going to pick focus talents based upon early game availability either.

I'm playing on hard. A priest definitely isn't necessary, although this is a party with 3 druids, not a single druid taking over for a single priest. Priests are nice though and I do plan on taking one(probably the NPC) in my first party.

I've been playing through with parties heavy on single classes, and just did druid. Druid is by far the most hilarious so far. I went with only 3, a fighter and chanter frontline, and a wizard. In retrospect I probably didn't need the wizard. 3x Returning Storms w/Heart of the Storm maxed might druids is insane output while your druids can do other things at the same time. And it's an AoE that travels with you, so you position it as necessary by moving your character. Sometimes I'd even just toss AoE CC on top of my druid's, 'cause it doesn't really matter if they get CCed along with the enemy. "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me!" Using 3 big opening AoE nukes also meant many fights were over before they begun. I'm a fan of some of their level 1 nukes as well, which I hadn't used much before since I saved those for tanglefoot in my parties with a single druid. I wrecked the beetles so hard. Their heals are also more serviceable than I'd expected, I'd been ignoring them for priest heals but they have some contenders of their own. Anyone else tried any odd combinations, stacked classes, weird builds?

Soldier for 2h(Great Sword, Pike), Ruffian for 1h(stiletto). Noble for Wizards if you're gonna go the blast talent route. I like having everyone with a solid ranged weapon when I have enemies all CCed in big AoEs, so I go for Arquebus/Arbalest/Blunderbuss. Although in the BB it's awhile before you can equip everyone with what you want so I skip focus on some characters while I'm just using whatever is available. The Pike is also a nice back-up melee weapon, with its reach you can hit things in clusters easier with a support character. I like it on my druid, since I want returning storm to be hitting stuff but I don't quite want him on the front line. Knight is decent for Morning Star/Crossbow too. I agree with most of what whipstitch says above. Peasant is pretty awful...I know it's called "Peasant" but still! Adventurer I've been staying away from as it's too pigeon-holey for my style. It's basically the Estoc or nothing.

There were ways around it in all IE games. Find Traps spell, and sending summons to get rid of traps for example. Also, some spells allowed for high resistance or immunity to damage from traps so you could potentially tank them with certain characters. In 2e based games though I just used dual class or multiclass rogues. Fighter/Rogue was good, and Rogue-> Wizard had some synergy(invis+buffs+backstabs). In 3e(IWD II) I just used Rogue 1/Wizard. With high int/dex character it was easy enough to keep up on Search/Disable/Open.

Maybe sorta not really worth noting but the pistol has one more small advantage in that it pierces arcane veils. That said, I'd still say crossbow is better seeing those stats.

The big balance problem I see is that the larger guns do similar/more DPS while doing more "alpha"/burst, relative to other ranged weapons. Honestly, I haven't used pistols much, but I know bows were very weak while and leadsplitter and arquebus were just dominating for me. The actual damage might be balanced on paper, but the game has several factors that favor hard-hitting over fast hitting. DT is the obvious thing, but there's also a lot of passive heal over time which counters sustained damage more than it does burst which requires more active healing(or defensive) abilities to react to which cost enemies time/resources.

I think they need to really assess each weapon's purpose. And I think each has an obvious direction - Crossbows should be best for less skilled weapon users. Your caster who just needs to do some shooting to conserve spells. Bows should be best for those heavily focused in them - IE ranger, ranged rogue/fighter - with high reward for mastering them and best "sustained" output. Guns should be for those not intending to spend long in ranged combat: high ranged burst, then run into melee.

Isn't this an exploit ? Depends on who you ask. If you ask me, it's very powerful but a completely reasonable action, packing 3 guns, all loaded, using one and switching to another; same as any other weapon, and historically how weapons like this might've been used at times - and certainly in the adventuring format presented, at least. So if you ask Sawyer, it's probably an exploit. It's a reasonable use of the weapons but obviously if it requires precise pausing like this, it isn't intended. I think they should just allow it to work more normally though, and balance guns as necessary.

Druid PC. After playing IWD I and II I am eager to play a druid that's genuinely powerful with good spell variety. A shame about the state of shapeshifts, but other than that they're a good hybrid caster/healer which is something I enjoy but that is rarely done well. The rest will depend on what's available as companions and how much I like their personalities. I think Monk and one other class aren't available, and I might go hired adventurer route for Monk if I don't want to use a full party of pre-made companions.

I enjoy building the strongest characters within the rules that I can, but at the same time I don't want my builds to trivialize the game. What's the point if the reward is essentially a lower difficulty setting? It's a situation where you can't please everyone I guess. I personally would rather have very strict balance. I have a personality that just doesn't let me accept weaker builds, and thus strict balance ensures a player like myself has more variety. There were classes/races in the Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate games that were simply a non-option as far as I was concerned - as much as I wanted some of them to be good they just were clearly a downgrade from any objective perspective. I think using Cleric domains in Icewind Dale II is a good way to explain what kind of "niche" building I'd rather see. There were certainly some duds, but I ended up using some of the less popular ones because they weren't a direct downgrade and served certain purposes. My favorite being Mask. Mask had some worthless skill bonuses since Clerics just weren't suited to be using thief skills due to limited implementations of various things in IWDII's version of 3.0e, and thus was mostly overlooked. But it had some great defensive spell options(ones that you can't just have a wizard or sorcerer buff you with) along with free blind fight. I preferred it to the much more popular Tempus for a melee cleric. That's the kind of balance I like to see, where there's at least an argument to be made and personal preferences can factor in. OTOH, there're imbalances like Half-Elves vs. Humans. There is literally no reasonable argument for taking Half-Elves in IWDII, other than "RP reasons". Humans get stronger and more versatile racial bonuses. Actually, I'd say Humans were fairly clearly > most non-ECL races for most builds. This is the kind of balance - or lack of - that I don't like. IWD also ran into issues with casters just being completely dominant for HoF, but HoF was crazy and imbalanced, plus 3E favored casters at higher levels already.

Yeah I'm hoping we get one more beta build before release, not just for traps but also to see how the game plays without the interrupt and dexterity issues of the current build.

Which is why I doubt many players will use it on more than one character. No point in having lower levels of it if they're just going to have traps that suck. If low-mid level mechanics gave you reliable traps with decent effects that weren't basically outscaled by enemies, maybe.

Since cost increases the more points you invest, it does make sense to spread out a little into athletics at least. Mechanics will likely be a 1 character maxes it sort of deal. Albeit JE Sawyer said you could use it to lay more total traps I think, if taking it w/multiple characters. I doubt anyone will end up doing that. Lore is probably going to be the stat the PC takes for dialogue. Survival I'd have maxed for a single character just for various skill checks, and ignored on everyone else. It might be good on everyone for some players who use consumables, but I'm a consumable hoarder and usually end up selling my potions and such in these sorts of games. In the backer beta so far I haven't used any, and had no trouble. I might be taking some level of stealth on all characters, depending on how it ends up in the release version. If I need really high stealth, I'll just take it on one scouting character.

I don't even understand why antelope is even an option when you can have a bear or lion. Bears and lions are so far above the others. Wolves are pack hunters, an individual wolf is pretty weak, and against an armed/armored human would be kind of a joke. Antelopes and stags both just kinda seem too... lunchy.

Yeah I think running out of spells will be my main reason for resting, and I doubt longevity will play out in a very interesting way as they seem to've intended. Already, it feels a bit silly having characters knocked out and then just jumping back up after a battle. Healing health to full after resting feels more ridiculous than magical healing as well. It's just a bit odd and contrived feeling. I understand they didn't want taking a "healer" class to feel mandatory but I don't like the results of them trying to avoid that. But as long as combat itself is good it's not going to bother me too much.

It's essentially a "weaken myself" button right now, and the shapeshift models are also pretty hideous. I've been ignoring it entirely. Druids are too good as an active caster to have them dinking around in melee trying to be a hybrid. There's also no real pre-buffing, so you can't use/build them like a battle cleric - same reasons "gish" style wizard builds are garbage currently. I wouldn't really mind if it were removed for now, and added in an expansion later in a more complete and well thought out implementation.