anameforobsidian

Blunderbuss are available at stores. Stores have some items nowhere else has available. This is especially valuable for figurines. Raise the difficulty if it's easy. PotD is not. Switching weapons is valuable because different monsters have different resistances. This is more noticeable the higher the difficulty goes. Lots of monsters are immune or close to crushing, so then it makes sense to switch sets. Also, there's a very effective build that relies on starting off battles with three quick arquebus shots; if you quick switch you can shoot without reloading. This makes for a devastating opening.

Debatably, soulbounds are not the best weapons in the game when other weapons are enchanted up. However, I've heard very good things about stormcaller (top of tower outside White March) for the cypher. It's a nice ranged bow with an awesome storm ability on it. I used it the entire game.

I'm going to go by class, like you did. Great post by the way: Fighter: I think this class is mostly fine where it stands. I could see an evolution where they started learning special strikes they would automatically use after so many hits, but that's unnecessary. Monk: It's worth pointing out that while fists do crush damage, they enchant faster than you can get similar weapons without metagaming and do a **** ton of damage. If you meet a crush immune enemy, just switch to a different weapon set. I wish they had an option to go back to the wound system as originally conceived. Also, they should add a couple feats for unarmored monks. It is trope, but it never feels viable on PotD; these feats would of course have an opportunity cost and reward of increased speed. Barbarian: Great take on Barbarian. I would add that their low accuracy is a little too punishing on higher difficulties; maybe carnage as a modal that activates with other modals. Also, it seems bizarre that they're strongly encouraged by mechanics to build high health pools, but then fighters are the one with constant endurance. Maybe they could do an ability that gives them endurance regen if they have low armor (thus also affirming trope). Finally, I would love to see them put in Baldur's Gate uncontrollable rages as an optional power. Not only does it fit trope, but it's a great mechanic that has ties to real life. Paladin: I'm very happy with paladins as they are. Maybe a special move at higher levels per each paladin order. Imagine Bleakwalkers getting an execution ability, or Wayfarers getting a passive healing aura. I want to see more Paladin orders in the story (also, why weren't Crucible Knights a paladin order?). Rogue: In my tons of playthroughs I've never enjoyed the Rogue, so my knowledge is limited. Too risky, special abilities aren't that great. I would add some more evasion type abilities. Ranger: It seems silly to play a non-bow ranger after WM came out. The gunpowder abilities suck in comparison to Twin Arrows. Cipher: Great take on Cipher. Some levels seem less useful than others, but all in all a great class. Chanter: The chanter is a strange class, and it feels like people love it or hate it. I would like to see Chanters get the ability to have two active buffs generated at the same time, even with shorter duration or less power. I haven't played since they rebalanced the summons. I do not think chanters lack power though. Even without the dragon thrashed there are tons of good buffs. I would like to see the song mechanic slightly reworked so that it makes sense as an actual song, maybe requiring various lyrics as part of the refrain, and requiring variations in the chant. Right now it's not uncommon to have chanters just chanting the dragon slashed over again. Priest: I mostly agree, especially about the increased abilities and priests of all the gods. Hylean priests could get bird swarm. Wizard: Wizards are about where they should be; slightly OP, but not enough to be necessary for each party. I appreciate their build variety. Druids: Druids are pretty great, but they need some more high level burst spells. I would also love to see a swarm summon: imagine summoning 14 xaurips into a boss fight.

Keep in mind the Ardra dragon is hard even for a dragon. I only found the Ice Dragon harder on PotD. Here are some general tips: Most importantly, one of the nastiest abilities she has is a dragon fear aura. Keep protection from fear up (lvl 1 priest), or similar abilities. If it hits, it lowers accuracy by 20 and then no one is hitting her easily. This is one of the few fights where you need a heavily armored main tank. Draw aggro with a tank, and swing either the dragon or your party around so you are attacking her side, NOT the front or back. Breath will mega kill your party, and tail whip isn't nice either. Status effects are cumulative in PE, so the main difficulty is getting the first one to land. Walls and characters with status effect AoEs are very helpful here, because they keep ticking. Once she gets hit, load on effect after effect, basically causing a cascading fail in her defenses. Scrolls of resurrect are your friend. Basically, bad luck happens, and you need a way to quickly recover. Mind control works on her as well as her minions. Cyphers and Wizards can lead to the enemy tanking each other for you. You do not have to fight her the first time around, you can talk your way out of it and then meet a dragon hunter who teaches you a special move. Swing around the bottom and engage the kobolds xaurips first; you can clean out many of them before she reaches you. Keep your least useful character for this fight on xaurip duty. I found it easier to occupy the dragon and take down the Adragans first. You want weapons with high damage for this fight, NOT necessarily high DPS. Her armor is shedding most of the damage you put out per attack, so lighter weapons like hunting bows won't really hurt her. When I beat her the first time on PotD, Sagani could not hit her with Stormcaller; her armor was too thick. Dragons are beasts, which means beast-slayer enchantments could help. Hope that helps!

I found 12 to be a good level to take it on. I had to come back later for the general, but that may have been the stacking bug.

Of course, it could also have something to do with saltwater, it occurred to me when thinking of the terrain at Defiance Bay. I love words.

Bracken means an area full of ferns: Bury means to dig a hole and put a dead person in it: So maybe something like Fern-Grave?

After reading the best moments thread, I reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of the writing. The characters were well written, and everyone seems to have a favorite (normally Eder, Aloth, or Durance). The plot had several issues, but was equal to its average peers. The skill check writing was normally good: clear choices, clear descriptions, clear responses. The one area I think it really fell down was NPC writing. In BGI&II it was very common to run into guys who would give a short blurb of text, or run into people who had a problem that needed fixing in the area you were already in. Or they would at least give you a short blurb of text before attacking, sometimes a simple choice. These are things like the archaeological dig in BGI, the druids in Cloakwood forest, the mother who wants you to rescue her child from wolves, the mages at the top of the magic store that will attack if you tell them about sociology, the Ogre at the entrance to an inn, etc. In BGII you had various vampire / shadow thief fights. PST had random pickpockets you could catch and learn from, and way more. This writing is common, helps define the setting, and offers minor reactivity. Where's this in Pillars? I feel like you get some of it in Ondra's gift, and a half-hearted attempt in the market place, and then the random Leaden Key assassins. In general, it feels like this is missing from the base game. This can make parts of the cities feel a bit dead, and large sections of the wilderness feel featureless. I feel like several areas, particularly Esternwood and Stormwall gorge could have benefitted from this content. Stormwall is a quiet place. Maybe have a spore flower thrall say something before it attacks, and certainly give all the druids a reason for attacking you. Esternwood is a missed opportunity; why are there no vignettes about wichts. Maybe a parent attacked by the wicht they were trying to feed, etc. It could also be helpful in the larger dungeons (cult of Skaen anyone?). However, I think this is one area that White March particularly improved in, so I have hope for PE2. Stormwall has one pc to talk to. Russetwood has 4 npcs, and several sidequests. I'd like to see this content density in PE2.

Things that particularly stand out to me: Finding that bandit in the crossroads at night, that was a nice surprise. The burning house in WM. Killing a slaver then seeing his body hanging outside my castle. Character quests in general, particularly Eder's, Durance's, Sagani's, and Zahua (I still think of him as Forton). Galvino's place. I loved the atmosphere in particular. Raedric 2 - That fight was a really nice foil to the original Raedric fight; one could write and incredibly elaborate post about how living and dead Raedric are almost antithetical to each other yet maintain continuity of character. The changing tides at the docks. Teir Evron. I particularly liked how Eothas and Wael's shrines were different from everyone else. The Xaurip Sacrifice pit and pool of blood in Endless paths. Not only was skipping levels cool (even though a lot of the Endless paths were well done), but seeing the difference between the Drake and the Dragon was pretty neat. The Abbey of the Fallen Moon was cool, especially the part where you meet Ondra.

I had a lot of fun playing as a somewhat unoptimized monk on potd, the only must have abilities/ talents for me were the unarmed feats and flagellant's path (that move is ridiculously fun / useful). High might and resolve, with middling dex and con. I designed my monk with a lot of defense (iron wheel for one) and then used rooting pain and retribution as aggro. My active use abilities were stunning strikes, torment's reach, and swift strikes. I skipped the upper level abilities to get both (neither skyward kick nor resonant touch terrible impressed me in action. I think I got apprentice's sneak attack, because why would a melee character skip it? The only armor I remember on him was the helm you assemble and that red plate you get from the bridge fight (by the way, whoever at Obsidian designed the bridge fight did a great job). He was meant to be an off-tank, but I had more fun using three semi-tanks instead of one main. He was the heaviest of the three, would go straight into the action, and then constantly cycle up and down wounds. That way he's building resistances but he is always using torment's reach or strikes as the case may vary. Very fun character, middling damge, lots of survivability.

I lover her design but dislike her writing. Also, her end slides are sooooooooooooooooooooo long.

I drastically prefer the simplicity of the current method. If you unpause after autopause, just press the spacebar again.

I can agree with making the graphics a little less flashy, but it was only a problem for me three or four times in the game. However, I disagree with the idea that you should automatically be able to see what spell the enemy is casting. That goes beyond legibility, and is giving you a pretty big tactical advantage. I like the system the way it is now, where you can tell some spells from the animations. I can maybe see tying reading enemy spells into lore. What I think would help legibility is if there was a list of the status effects on you AND what they did. Right now the mouseover is only halfway there. Nothings wrong with using LUA in the combat log. It could behoove them to change the font for a nasty crit. Another option is to have it to where when you click on a character's name, it only shows log entries for that character. A final option could be an expanded log with an accountants style double ledger, where positive effects and damage out go on one side and negative effects and damage in go on the other side. I would just have a sell trash button. It's functionally the same, but you get to see cool weapon artwork for xaurip spears, etc. Either way, this is a minor issue at best. I would like a counter to stun, and I'm curious why they have an effect that can't be countered. But on the other hand, I have no problem with the stunlockers, because it keeps tactics interesting. Yes, Sagani can stun one dude to death, but who's it going to be? Similarly, the oh ****, your tanks stunned and now everything is moving past him moment leads to more interesting gameplay. A quick rest system would make it more like 4E, but I think it would face significant backlash from players. Several people on these boards are unhappy that they didn't just include BG style unlimited rests. Random encounters are just a bad idea. They encourage save-scumming in hard situations and they're tedious in easy situations. Or they're a source for farming kill xp. Sure you can have BG2 events, where your choices determine what randoms you get (or was that a mod?), but even those get tiresome and repetitious after the first few times. I like the current situation better, where assassins do wait for you, just on the normal maps.

Eh, I'm not going to pile on the OP. I have three suggestions though: 1. Lower the difficulty. There's no point in grinding through a fight you don't like. Changing it down from PotD to hard makes a world of difference alone. 2. CC is your friend. Hit the some of the other monks with mind control / confusion. If you have a cipher, let monk tank monk, that'll solve a lot of the back line problems. Use fast ones like slicken to give yourself some breathing room to start the cascading defense failure that ends in petrification. If you don't have a mage, go for druid storms. 3. If you didn't take a break between WM and WM2, you're supposed to. You're supposed to come back with a few more levels under your belt. The game did a relatively poor job showing this (It outright says so in one dialogue that you can skip through). 4. Have you changed your armor or weapons out in a while? Whitemarch gives you a ton of new equipment, most of it helps one build or another. Speaking of changing out armor, try some on the back line. A living character has more dps in the long run than a dead one. 5. Change your party up. You might have adopted a party built for a tank and spank strategy. In the base game, almost everything could be beaten through tank and spank. WM2 is a reaction to that. Leave through a different exit, and change it into a more durable build. I will say I agree with one criticism. Adds on dragon fights feel extremely gratuitous, except for the bog. I've done them all on PotD with plot characters, so it's not an issue of difficulty. It feels anticlimatic when you wipe even though you have a good handle on the Ardra dragon, because you forgot about his ****ty xaurip minions.

I never had any more, but if you've beaten the bog dragons, there's no real need for them.

The "it's not overpowered if you choose not to use it" argument is weak. Players have no reason nor responsibility to handicap themselves. That said, some spells are just stronger than others. If they're egregiously strong compared to another class they should be nerfed. If they're out of line for the class, then some other class abilities should be increased in potency. I played half the game on PotD with Hirviras and Aloth, and while returning storm was a useful spell, it was certainly no more useful than wizard mainstays like slicken, confuse, gaze of the Adragan, or wall of colors. I don't see how "relentless storm trivializes most encounters." For one thing there's a **** ton of enemies that don't get stunned or have resistance to shock. For another, shock doesn't affect light armored fighters that much and WM2 has a ton of lightly armored monks that wreck **** up. If storms were too powerful, they wouldn't have made or would have nerfed Stormcaller. It sounds like you ran into the one nasty group of druids and are overgeneralizing. So I think this is really an argument that druids may not have enough fire and forget control spells. I seem to remember the accuracy of their lower level control spells is pretty low, and at upper levels they do less status effects than wizards (venombloom is the only one in the last two spell levels), which leaves them kind of in the lurch. Really they control mobs through summons (tanks that have no long term health!), but I think people that want to use them as a nature wizard could do with more options than just lightning, firebug, and sunlance.

Personally, I like to keep a Paladin around most times I play. The buffs are decent, but there's other reasons to keep them. One is that on PotD you need several frontliners, and Paladins hold their own. Another is that the nastier bosses can pile damage on single target characters, vanilla Ardra dragon and Ice Dragon are probably the worst of these. They can occasionally hit so hard that you need two healers on a single target, and taking two priests is a waste. Perhaps the most important reason is that Paladins are great back up in case your priest gets killed. Reviving your priest or your mage turns the tide in knock-down, drag out fights (like the first time I fought Concelhaut). The next time I play, I'll probably be a chanter and still keep a paladin, but skip the fighter. Team synergies are more important than having one slightly stronger character. And yes, you can build a fighter so that virtually nothing can hurt them. So what? They keep aggro for **** in most of those builds, occupying three mobs while their fifteen friends head straight for the wizard or ranger. I agree with a lot of what has been raised here. If a paladin had a 1vs1 fight with a fighter the fighter would win easily I think beacuse of the fighter talents unbending and unbroken. Unbending is an incredibly powerful ability that doesn't get mentioned much on these forums. The fighter can also dish out higher damage due to weapon specialisations. Paladins are still fun to play with though, I have managed to be able to build them to there tank/ buff role with limited success. I can't build barbarians that have any real relevance yet but I'm still trying. Its not a one on one arena match, its a team based game. On a team a Paladin brings so much more that it is incomparable to a Fighter. Enemy Fighters are tough to fight because they are tough to kill. Even on PotD I don't find my parties in serious death struggles where I need a Fighter to go to that extreme in order to survive the encounter. All of the extra survivability of the Fighter is wasted as it is hardly ever needed. Meanwhile all of the team enhancing abilities of the Paladin are used every encounter in order to improve the efficiency of the team and manage the team's resource usage. If the game was balanced such that only a team buffed Fighter could survive an encounter Fighters would be much more useful, even necessary, but the game would be much worse as you'd need to follow the one true optimal team in order to play rather than the multiple paths that the game allows which can all be successful. Yeah obvisouly a paly is more of a team player. But he is a front line team player first and foremost and a fighter outshines him in that role and a priest outshines him in the buffing role. Don't Paladin and Priest buffs stack? In that case it's not an either or for buffing.

I'm curious, how does this party fare in the dragon fights? Also, what weapon is the ranger using?

That's a cypher.

Chanters are less active, by design. Fighters are the same way. And so are rangers and some paladin builds. That's not a failure. The existence of less active classes is okay in a party system, because it allows you to tune the party to the level of micro you are comfortable with. Some people may want to play a party of pure rogues or wizards, reacting all the goddamn time, and heavily dependent on micro to keep people alive. Some people may want one or two reactive classes (say a druid and a cleric), and the less reactive classes allow you to experience party play without constantly switching to those classes. Chanters can be played far more active than most people do. But I think the real interesting thing about a chanter is that they expose you to the possibility of a party without a priest (or dedicated healer). That's a huge conceptual shift.

Those aren't uncommon in rpgs (Ogre Tactics, 3.5 is practiaclly that with prestige), but I really don't want any more dramatic changes to the system. Make attack speed comprehensible, and then enough is enough.

It's lost a bit of its usefulness since flyers are now immune (as they should be), but it's still high on the utility list, that and Confusion (which is now per encounter).

Yes. I wouldn't mind an army of toy soldiers.

This is why continuous debuffs like wall of colors are so powerful. They keep ticking, and eventually hit, making it easier to make that cascading defense failure. Add to that the charm effect, and you have bosses tanking their own adds.

Traps made sense for Galvino's dungeon because of the mechanical theme. I don't think the separate living quarters up and downstairs make a ton of sense, but the richness of the materials don't. I didn't think about that. Maybe he should have taken over an abandoned mine and spruced it up. That makes more sense. Also, I would have liked to see wooden machines.