Odd Hermit

My main criticism so far is that I want wood elf to have a beard. Why pale elf get beards but not wood elf? That said the new faces for elves look better. I think some of the godlike ones need work still though.

I completely agree with you. I see interrupt as being possibly very useful. I could see a fast attacking high interrupt character really messing up a warrior wielding a slow two handed weapon. I just think explaining how the mechanic works is very difficult. If my characters is doing circa 50 damage, then I understand that +10% damage yields 5 more points on average, or how +5% critical hit chance works. Explaining how interrupt works seams a lot more challenging. I'm assuming it checks against concentration. So slower attacking characters could get extra concentration to mitigate. Slow attacks with high DT bypass seemed like the way to go so far though(I wonder if damage per hit factors into interrupt?). Perhaps they're still tweaking that stuff. Interrupts are nice but a well built/balanced party should have enough CC to not rely on RNG interrupts. I never thought "better use a high interrupt character to disrupt this caster", I just dropped a disabling ability/spell on them as its more reliable/ on demand.

They've kept multiclassing secret, secretly. Edér is actually a fighter/rogue. Fighter/rogues were a classic "rogue that doesn't suck at fighting" in Icewind Dale so it makes sense to bring it back in PoE for one of the potential party members.

I disagree. Accuracy can't be an significant character creation choice because it's essential for every build to successfully land their swings, shots, spells, etc. It was just the obvious choice and that isn't meaningful. The other stats still have significant benefits, they're just more of a choice than a requirement to be effective. You don't need longer durations or bigger AoEs, these just improve different aspects of your abilities. They come at opportunity cost, but they're not binary like accuracy. Accuracy on the other hand is all or nothing. If you have terrible accuracy it's not going to matter if you have +15% damage, +24% AoE size, and +30% duration on your debuff ability if the ability just whiffs altogether frequently. It's an unreasonable trade-off to lower accuracy for these benefits.

It was too good to come from an attribute, every class/build would be best maxing/prioritizing the attribute they put it on otherwise, except maybe a pure support/healer. They could've nerfed accuracy and/or changed graze/hit/crit mechanics, but this is probably the easiest way to deal with it. It'll probably be easier for them to polish up and balance things without having to factor in such a big variable from a single attribute. Especially with the way DT works, a graze vs. a hit is often the difference between dealing laughable or no damage so accuracy did a lot more than just a normal/gradual % increase in damage like might.

High Perception and Int for accuracy and deflection, and you can pump might up to get higher damage of course. And I think you could comfortably drop dexterity a fair amount to increase those. Then you need to decide how you want to balance defense vs. offense since Fighter has a lot of modal options. Offensively I like Vulnerable Attack which bypasses 5 melee damage threshold - essentially you pierce through more armor, at the cost of slower attack speed(. which will get you that higher damage per hit. But I think the Fighter's stronger modals are more defensive personally, but then I didn't use my fighter for damage as much as just putting him somewhere as an obstacle between enemies and my nukers. The Graze to Hit passive is a good choice for overall damage output as well. For a Weapon Focus I like picking one with a good multi-damage type and then a strong ranged option - personally I think guns/crossbows feel a lot stronger than bows especially if you're just gonna open from stealth and then swap to melee. All that in mind I'd say Soldier seems like a good pick.

Monks as frontline for their cone of prone and much higher damage than other "tanky" options Druid as nuker/controller due to their strong AoE damage(returning storm, burst of summer flame) and CC(tanglefoot, insect swarm on casters) while being more survivable than a Wizard and having solid support/healing Chanter for support with the burning weapon buff and ranged weapon speed or the endurance draining one. I didn't even use Invocations much but the summons seem strong. Mostly, my strategy was equipping my whole party with ranged weapons, using the burning weapon and ranged weapon chants, and locking everything down with Druid and the BB Wizard(slicken is OP though I find wizard lackluster overall) while I shot everything to death. I used the BB Fighter and sometimes the chanter to engage/chokepoint situationally, although monk would've been better.

Mine was doing absurd damage, equipped by just the BB priest. I saw over 20 damage from individual projectiles multiple times and I think each projectile can crit. I wondered if I might've had a bug by the end of the BB 'cause I think the highest I saw was something like 83, 19, 12 all in one shot. Yes, 83. I did have some buffs up but it seemed ridiculous that my priest was gibbing things left and right.

Was in the Dryford Ruins, one of the stone beetles technically seemed to die, but then the model was still active and dealing damage to my party. Summons wouldn't attack it, AoEs didn't affect it, and I couldn't target it. And it kept me in combat. Had to reload. So I'm reporting a bug on two levels ...

I'm just gonna toss a bunch of reactions and ideas out here. I'm fully aware that it's probably not going to go anywhere but just for my own entertainment and hopefully yours I'd like to just put my 2 cents in on some things. Druid Druids seem to be the most powerful caster to me. Their support options are reasonably strong while their crowd control and nuking is top tier while they're also more durable and versatile than mages. Their animal shapeshifts are both ugly and useless though, and feel disconnected from the rest of the class - very little synergy. I would like to see better shapeshift options, that tie in with the rest of the class better. Chanter Chanters seem like a great passive class and worthy of a spot in any party. However, there's something missing. In one of the updates it was mentioned that Chanters have minor skills at more traditional soul-based magic or something like that. Class talent(s) to gain low level, opener per-encounter spells that don't require chants would flesh them out a bit and make taking a more active route(my preference/bias) possible. Having something to do other than just auto-attack while building phrases to eventually maybe use an invocation or two would be nice. Wizard Wizards have a few powerful spells here and there that're nice to have, but outside of those the class is lackluster. As a pure ranged nuker/CCer they're a bit outclassed by druid which has more healing/support options too, and muscle wizard isn't really working well either. I think wizards should have their spells divided into three different types, with players being able to focus more/less in each type. First, there'd be your Grimoire spells. These are your big guns, too complex to fire off without assistance from your book. These would be per-rest, with a few becoming per encounter at higher levels. Second, would be the faster, weaker spells to use in a pinch, to deal with lesser threats, or to set yourself up to get more from the Grimoire spells. These would be per encounter. Name these what you like, cantrips or whatever. Then there'd be passive / modal spells or perhaps "enchantments" or something. These would focus your wizard more offensively, defensively, and potentially toward a more caster or more "gish" playstyle. I have a bias for wizards though so maybe this is a bit much... Cipher Perhaps Ciphers are meant to be the Gish class. They're a bit weird and I dislike the soul whip mechanic and the back-and-forth nature of the class (using weapons to build focus to use their spell-ish abilities)however. I don't think they're a bad class though, just not my cup of tea feel-wise. Paladin The accuracy party buff is nice, and they make a decent tank. But very boring. They just don't have enough to do right now, at least for early-mid levels. I'm reserving too much judgement though as I've read there's more coming depending on the order you choose? Monk I quite like Monk, as a more active/interesting front-line/tankish character. They're a little too fast paced at times as you need to constantly get rid of wounds - it's a weird pace that's more reactive than strategic at times, although I see there is an option to build damage by not using wounds which I haven't tried yet. Overall though I'm glad they tried something new here. Rogue I mainly used rogue as ranged damage because reckless assault pretty much makes me not what to be in melee with them. It's a big offense buff for a big defensive de-buff, and of course plinking away from range just tends to reduce the downside. The damage is pretty good but I'm not sure I'd ever want one over caster. I enjoy rogues thematically but they don't feel slippery enough or stealthy enough in PoE, you've got a few okay escape/flanking options but they're very limited uses and not so powerful it makes up for that. They do have a barbarian-esque ability to pass through engagement, but I find just shooting the mage or whatever you might rush a barb or rogue at works well enough with much lower risk. Priest Priests are pretty priesty, and not all-out juggernaut melee characters with casting as they could be in some DnD based games, which is a nice change. They're versatile enough though without much offensive power. I currently miss more God-specific stuff though, or something like "domain" options. Maybe like with the Paladin that will come soon. Fighter They're still not amazingly interesting, but definitely better than in IE games. They get their job done well enough and for those who don't want to micromanage a monk they're probably the best front-line melee fighter/tank. Which is appropriate. Barbarian/Ranger These I'm just tossing at the bottom to simply say they don't do their job and have no place in my party currently. They definitely need some funk rubbed on them. Barbarian is too fragile, Ranger is just not doing good enough damage and doesn't really do anything else well enough to justify taking over a rogue with a bow. On character building in general I feel class-specific talents are more/less mandatory for different classes. The druid, for example, has shapeshifting ones that are obvious passes at the moment. Whereas other classes almost feel incomplete without taking certain key class-specific talents. Which of course somewhat robs them of the more general all-class options. I also feel like attributes might need to have some fine-tuning for each class rather than providing the same benefits across all classes. Some stats are just going to end up dump or pump otherwise, which seems to be somewhat against JE's goal for all attributes to be valuable for all classes and more of a playstyle thing. Last but not least, I feel like more leeway with out-of-combat preparation and "opening" engagements, and perhaps some escape/reset options that actually work, would be nice. I like having some serious pre-fight preparations and I think the game can and should reward them a little better. Of course, I also don't want to spend 5+ minutes casting buffs in order of their durations before a fight, but I think there's a happy medium to be found. Many abilities/spells/etc. are simply "combat only" which is so far mostly just irritating. Especially considering the game has a stealth / scouting mechanic and high difficulty settings. Having some room to work is important, fights don't need to be to-the-death arena style in this kind of game. I want to be able to GTFO back to town. Make escape difficult, sure, but it should still be an option and a successful escape can be as satisfying as victory in some cases.

I like small characters, and would play Dwarf in this game. But Godlike have better racials currently, and you can pick any size. So I'll probably be a Godlike of some sort with the Dwarf size. If Dwarves got better racials at some point though, I'd definitely go Mountain Dwarf. Orlan are neat, but I don't like that their lifespan is shorter than humans, and they're too ...wild for me. I like the industrial, undergroundyness of dwarves.

How are people finding this aspect of the game? Right now I'm doing a lot of backtracking playing on hard difficulty. While I've always got some characters who could go another few battles, your party is often only as good as that spellcaster with nothing good left. I feel like casters could definitely use more per-encounter options - maybe they have a maximum spell pool and a minimum or something rather than going completely dry. I understand at high levels we'll get low level spells as per-encounter, but by high levels I expect that won't mean a whole lot. The no-healing aspect of the game hasn't weighed very heavily into my decision making as a result of my limited spells. Perhaps I'm crutching on my spell casters too much or I have a too caster-heavy group.

The beetles are rough, and I've been testing various builds on them since they're the easiest thing to rush out and test combat on. I've been managing them best with the druid's large AoE root, and my druid has +45% duration on spells so that helps keep things under control. Brings me back to IWD times a bit TBH - I have everyone equipped with ranged weapons just plinking at rooted melee. The beetles are extremely deadly in melee, but mostly helpless at range and don't seem to resist crowd control much. I'm on hard difficulty at the moment. It took me a few wipes to figure out how to handle them though, trying to fight them "normally" would just end up in a hopeless mosh like you say - and of course the beetles almost automatically win if it gets that point. The combat overall feels very promising compared to the last time I played the backer beta, and will definitely end up quite tactical if they get the numerical balancing along with the pacing of it figured out.

At the moment a large number of mage buff spells kind of suck and it's a dull playstyle to have to cast them at all - like playing a Cleric in DnD except instead of stacking all your buffs once per longer period of time, mage would have to do it every fight while in combat. It just doesn't work out well. I suggest moving (some of)them to passive, always active spells. Most are not interesting to cast in combat anyway. Some sort of cost to keep them up, perhaps, and limits to how many can be active at once, of course. Kind of like "upkeep" spells in Dragon Age: Origins. Maybe some class talents that allow you to stack more of them. I think this would be a step in the right direction to making more "gish" mage builds work. This could extend to some other spells for other classes, but I think mage could use it most.

I don't have a problem with people using edits and the like, when there's a clear line between exploit/cheat and legitimate tactics I'm good staying on my own side, but when it's blurry I don't like trying to sort it out and try to make up my own personal limitations to make up for poor balance, which can put many things off the table lowering the overall complexity/diversity of character building and combat through that exclusion.

I feel like the classes desperately need better/more talent choices - and higher talents to level ratio - for build tinkering to be part of replay value. Without more substantial, gameplay changing talents there's just a roughly optimal build for most classes at the moment. Attributes also need some work. Perception and Resolve are obvious duds for most classes, and Intelligence is for some as well since not all classes have enough AoE or duration based abilities to benefit from it. So it's all feeling pretty cookie cutter at the moment.

Currently the situation seems to be: - Many buff spell/abilities are combat only - There are few non-combat focused class spells/abilities for exploration, dialogue, etc. - Combat is a very in or out, locked in binary sort of status There are pros and cons to this that I think would be good to talk about, as I think the current set up could use changes. As I see it: Pros: - No lengthy/tedious "I have to cast 20 buffs in the right order for their durations on all my characters before I fight this dragon" - Potentially prevents a fair amount of cheese tactics (AoE fields, trap stacking and the like for example) - Out of combat preparation almost always heavily favored the player(who gets to initiate fights on their terms) rather than the AI Cons: - Feels "gamey" - Limits the usefulness of many spell buffs, I noticed this particularly with my wizard who has a bunch of smaller buff spells I'll never use - Non-combat gameplay ends up being less diverse as classes don't offer many different non-combat options (in a game w/no combat XP...) - Clever out of combat tactics are limited I lean toward wishing there was more to do outside of combat, though I wouldn't want it to go all the way that direction. I think they haven't found the right compromise yet.

My initial reaction to the combat has not been great, although it feels like there's a lot of potential in the actual ability and class designs. I admit beforehand I haven't played a lot yet and my ignorance might end up being the only real issue here but I'm going to give my 2 cents anyway: #1. Issue for me is pacing. Combat feels too fast and erratic. And even with autopause options set, it just feels a bit too jerky - not fun to watch your characters with frequent interrupting pauses between short bursts of action. I think a speed between the slow and normal speeds should be available, plus you should be able to set it to automatically switch to a certain default speed in combat. Then there's the classes which I will divide into two variations: RPG fighter and RPG wizard. That's certainly an oversimplification when it comes to all the varied spells/abilities and so on, but when it comes to the very basics we've got: Simple guy who fights good all the time(fighter), and complicated guy who's more versatile but then burns out and becomes useless(wizard). The obvious and simple solution to "RPG" fighter is just give them more abilities. PoE isn't too bad, but I'm still feeling like Fighter, Paladin, Rogue in particular are a little too boring and auto-attack bot-ish. Granted, having a party full of complicated classes can also just be too much micromanagement, but I just feel like allowing classes to be nudged toward a middle ground away from the extremes, with more trade-off options in character building between passive and active, would be nice. I think the casters - Priest, Druid, Wizard - would particularly benefit from the ability to choose a few spells as "per encounter" for each spell level every time they gain access to a new spell tier. Doesn't have to be a lot of spells or uses per encounter, even. Perhaps this could even be an optional system where you trade some spells per rest to buy the spells per encounter. This would just help with improving their longevity while making builds more unique.

They're going to be very different games. Just because they have a few of the same features doesn't mean they're directly competing. DA:I is much larger budget and aimed at a wider audience. PoEt is lower budget but with the bonus of more dev freedom due to crowd funding, and aimed at a narrower demographic. DA:I will be more toward the action side than turn based tactical - something along the lines of Mass Effect. It will be flashier, with more impressive fully 3D graphics. PoE will have slower paced combat with more hand-crafted feeling aesthetic - ideally of quality equal to, or better than, what made some of the old IE games age so well. I'm sure DA's budget will make a big difference, however there's EA looming over it so some distasteful but typical AAA nonsense is likely to mar the experience as well. The main thing for me though, is I don't like the Dragon Age setting all that much. PoE is something new, and while I could guess I can't be sure I'll like it, but at least it's a setting I haven't seen in multiple games already like with so many other releases anymore.

And I went with a tier just below the beta access because I thought "I should wait it out to play the complete game for the full experience blah blah". Past self, you're an idiot.

I'm glad they're going with a setting and rules of their own that they can get creative with. I loved the old IE games but we don't really need more of the same Forgotten Realms stuff.

To make a convincing romance in a video game between the player's character and an in game character is extremely difficult to pull off. The player character can be such a variety of different personalities, and trying to make "one size fits all" romance options most often comes off extremely tacky. I'm glad they're staying away from it for now, as it's a lot of work that I'd rather see go into what I'd consider more important aspects of the game.

For me it'll depend on the races/classes of the available companions and how decent their starting stats and such are for that class. I'll probably use a mix of written and custom. I can always switch things up in subsequent playthroughs, but I really want to experience certain classes more than others for the first run through.

Personally I'm planning on going with a classic(at least for me) four person party. In the old IE games I always felt like 6+ was a crowd, while less than four and you're a little lacking utility wise/too easily mobbed. I might go with five depending on the in game NPCs and how the game works, but no more than five! Druid: They just sound more interesting than wizards to me, and I almost always main a caster in this style of game - even if sometimes that caster is a melee juggernaut cleric or whatever. Ranger: The animal companion sounds like it was done right and less of a liability like they could be in many other games. I'm also just kind of animal enthusiast. There's a little dog sleeping on my feet right now in fact <3 Chanter: These kind of make me think of the pagans in the old thief games for some reason, funky but awesome. I have never been a fan of the more faith/deity focused healers in RPGs, so this seems like a great alternative. Those are the main classes that interest me with what info is currently available at least. 4th and maybe a 5th character I'm undecided on - I might even double up on one or two of the above.

Class could still be set, for characters whose personality/dialogue would be linked to it. That still leaves all kinds of things to tweak to your liking. For example in BGII, we had multiple thief/mage characters who I could've built much better from scratch even if I still had to work within the thief/mage classes.