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engagement here is more so that certain characters can prevent other characters from running away. it's meant to limit kiting/mobility and give tanks/melee-ers battlefield control options. flanking is an orthogonal mechanism.

i think this was a poe1 specific behavior, but functionally it wasn't terribly different from now because everyone had +1 engagement by default and a 1-engagement limit by default, so it was rare to come across enemies that needed more than two normal allies to flank. (edit: also unlike deadfire, there really wasn't a mechanism by which characters lost engagement, so pretty much any ally in any situation could suffice so long as they had a melee weapon)

yeah, i think if the designers had more time, they should've done a cost-pass on martial abilities. fighter in particular suffers from the fact that knock down/mule kick are eternally useful abilities and suffer particularly from "would i rather do X ability once, or mule kick Y times?" I occasionally do power/inspired strike when there's lots of concentration or immunity to interrupts at play, but most of the time, I'd rather just do Mule Kick 4 times.

i was thinking along the lines of -- low reflex and having tanglefoot or something like that. would that also trigger toughened fury? i guess the proc rate is extremely low either way...

My wife did a pass yesterday at doing the watercolors on this orlan portrait on artstation after I complained about a lack of good orlan/halfling art in games, and I'm pleased with the results, happy to share.

possibly there's some party synergy to be had with toughened fury, and if so, then a SC fighter also has the advantage of upgrading a few abilities (and also sundering blow or take the hit). SC fighter is probably just way under-explored honestly. though i actually think having clear the path as an upgrade is worlds better than just vanilla clear out and worth SC on its own, if that's the angle you're going for. i did it once in an aborted run, and had a lot of fun with it, sheer mayhem.

for pure dps, the summoned weapons are better, but for pure Unstoppable Boi energy, dragon is great. literally a ton of health and various helpful immunities. and even if the summoned weapons can pelt out a lot more damage over their duration, the dragon can burst out a lot of damage and clear out a lot of trash mobs with their tail whip or fire breath right when it appears (easily mid-100s damage in a huge area). with a troubadour or bellower to easily get >100% uptime on the summon duration, i've literally used the dragon to tank several of the megabosses. that might take up the entire screen

SC chanters in DF are indeed exceptional, but so are MC chanters in their own way (imo the biggest advantage of an SC chanter is getting the dragon summon for megaboss purposes, but you need a troubadour or bellower to really take advantage of it)

what's your party like? party-wide buffs are not like a necessity and are more like class-specific advantages. Priests, chanters, and to a far lesser extent druids and paladins. Ciphers afaict only have individual buffs (though they can be real good). It's not terrible to miss out on them, because what that should mean is that you're simply filling that role in with a different class whose strength lies elsewhere outside of party buffs. what about konstanten? not vailian, you can build em as a howler or chanter for the chant buffs (not as good at doing buffing invocations). they are a skald subclass so will heavily prefer being melee though and it sounds like you have a lot of melee already. (though a skald can still be decent at ranged, you still get cheap offensive invocations, you just miss out on the occasional free phrase)

oh yeah, this is real good advice. if you have lame engagement skillz don't worry so long as you can just start combat right. especially on higher difficulties, deadfire is definitely a game where simply having the right formation to start a fight can make a pivotal difference. there are some nekataka/town ambushes that are brutal simply because you start surrounded or with limited control over your positioning.

one thing to remember is engaging is afaict an active action. you *have* to at least click on an enemy, and that'll trigger engagement (if available). if you just run in, say, try casting a spell, enemies will just walk around your would-be tank. you can even do this to switch engagement, if you have multiple enemies and not enough open engagement. click on an enemy and your character will switch their engagements to include that enemy. i've definitely done this on characters with only one engagement to keep multiple enemies stuck on them and protect other characters. (that being said, once you have engagement, it's sticky. you can read scrolls, drink potions, cast spells, etc. without dropping it)

a few people notably disagree with me, but i maintain that serafen as a cipher is a trap subclass. wildmind is nothing like wild mages. BG-style wild mages had plenty of upside to balance how much randomness they added*. Wild mind foolishly tries to equally weight the outcomes which--all things being equal--favors the enemy, not the player. (In general, the player is expected to the win every fight in deadfire. Adding more variance simply provides more opportunities for the enemy to triumph over the player.) And, all things are not equal. Some of the "beneficial" outcomes may instead be bad, depending on what ability they triggered off of (since they go off whatever targeting was used). It's fun to buff or invisibility your party, but you were expected to win that fight anyway. It's much less fun to buff or invisibility the enemy... tl;dr: if you want a cipher go with ydwin. serafen is a good barbarian. if you really want a principi-aligned character, pick up mirke. she's way better (and more fun!). * people may forget, but wild mages weren't just about random outcomes. wild mages got extra spells per level as if they were specialized but had no opposition school. they also had plenty of abilities they could use to skew the results of their random wild surges to more beneficial outcomes. they also had one spell that let them cast any spell from their library (with a surge) and all they had to do was burn a level 1 spell slot. these are plenty of bonuses that function as upsides to all the randomness that are missing from serafen's wild mind in deadfire.

this right here is kind of answering your own question. if your backline caster is being attacked, then a tank is not doing their job somewhere. make sure you actually have enough engagement. it seems like you get the gist of it, but just to reiterate: most characters don't have engagement by default and a shield is the main way. some of the real "tank"-type classes have additional ways to get more engagement (barb, fighter), and a few casters have abilities that grant more engagement. generally one engagement per melee is not enough i find to keep my caster-heavy parties safe. fighters are real great for this - one of their stances gives them +3 engagement *and* damage reduction. edit: do you actually see the engagement lines? it should be pretty obvious which characters are engaging each other. disengagement attacks are far more punishing than normal attacks (huge acc bonus, huge damage bonus) Does the enemy have engagement? If not, then just step away and let the enemy retarget your tank, because they'll be engaged (if your tank is properly set up) and the AI is extremely reluctant to break engagement. If the enemy has engagement you should, as some suggestions: instead have your non-tank melee target non-engaging targets interrupt/prone/knockup them (while they're interrupted, they can't engage) hit them with something that grants staggered or dazed (eliminates engagement) hit them with hard crowd control (stun, paralyze, terrify) edit: buff your non-tank melee with swift (can't be engaged) or equip non-engaging armor if you're still struggling, i would question what that other melee character is. most non-tank melee-ers have escape abilities of some sort, even if it's just bonuses against disengagement. Even a barbarian built to be a glass cannon has sprint and leap. Rogues are the most glass-cannon-y of melee characters, and not only do they have tons of escape mechanics, pretty much all their abilities interrupt, which lets you run away if needed. the AI also likes to target lower health characters - try picking up tough, not-dumping your CON, etc. a tank with lower health but high defenses will be a juicy target for the AI. all else fails, equip your non-tank melee with reach weapons (staff, pike, there's a reach unique great sword). edit: worth pointing out there are plenty of (even some pretty major) systems that have tanks but no system of aggro or taunts (which are both pretty MMO specific mechanics imo). Generally they rely on making it extremely punishing for enemies to *not* target the tank, or to step away from them. same principle. it's also worth pointing out that while some AI will love to just target squishier characters (bad news for glass cannon melee with no mobility), some AI are just sticky to their first target (good news if it's your tank). The AI kinda varies. Enemy rogues, for example, can get really punishing because at mid-levels bc they frequently have engagement and will use mobility spells to jump past your front line, trapping and absolutely wrecking your squishier characters - this AI's aggressive willingness to go after squishy characters (even eating a disengagement attack if necessary) is kinda unique to rogue types. Of course, that's what you should be doing to them, given the chance

"lash" means any weapon that says something like "+10% damage as frost" or something. it's a very particular type of enchantment that's handled very specifically by the game, for one it's a rare example of a multiplicative multiplier. as a result ppl tend to prize them. for what we're talking about here, lashes are also peculiar in that they undergo their own immunity/armor check separate from the normal weapon damage. so you can definitely be in a situation where the weapon itself is doing 0 damage but the lash will do some damage.

I think you'll be hardpressed to do triple crown solo without some form of cheese, or at least something that someone would consider cheese. For example, SC Monk is eminently do-able, but afaict pretty much relies on ajamuut's stalking cloak's cheesy synergy with whispers of the wind. As another example, ironically the strong inherent sustain and summons of a herald I don't consider cheese. There's no exacting metagame or itemization to exploit, just a very strongly complementary set of classes in one package. To me, I think pretty much anything is fair game in terms of "gamer bushido" with the exception of outright cheating via console commands. Personally, I would not find the strand of favor exploit rewarding. But even the latter, triple crown solo is hard enough [and you still have to find the strand of favor!] that really I would say "if it felt rewarding to you, then do it and bask in your glory." if you do something and someone says "hey that doesn't count, you used something cheesy" your response should just be "ok, then, you try it."

there are a few slashing immunes out there (not nearly as many as piercing immunes though), but as long as you have party members oryou bee-line to unlocking the raw damage saber as backup you should be fine (i don't think there are many slash immunes on the critical path of the story). edit: you could also make sure to use one of the sabres with a lash. even if the enemy is slash immune, the lash damage is based on damage that would have been dealt *before* immunities and armor are considered, so you'll still be able to squeeze out a bit.

this has probably been discussed before, but i wonder if it's because for many poison-immunity and poison-countering things, it treats "countered by antidote" as the same thing as an actual poison keyword, but actual keyword-based bonuses are not as generous.

how does this work? you hit them, combat starts, and then by the time the get to you they de-aggro?

you really could just play like a normal chanter. you only have to worry about chant synergies with the brisk modal on, because then things can get a little funky (in your favor). for self-buffing chants, i think this is impossible. you would need to get an additional +9s out of your linger, and every +50% duration increase (+10 intellect or troubadour benefit) only gives you 1.5s. Last time I checked, unlike a bunch of other stuff, you don't benefit from many duration-extending effects due to how linger is implemented as something that "overrides" normal spell duration effects (though you can use Wall of Draining or Salvation of Time after a chant has been applied). You also don't get power level bonuses to chants, at least in terms of duration (probably for similar reasons as above, "linger" overrides how most normal spell effects work). So given all that, after including troubadour bonus, you still need 4.5s worth of duration, which is +30 intellect, and since stats are capped out at 35, that seems impossible (e.g. you'd need 40 intellect). So you can get partial uptime on 3 chants, but I don't see a way to get 100% uptime on 3 chants persistently. there is one chant where you could effectively get 3 or more chants uptime. the skeleton summoning chant is kinda broken in terms of duration, so with modest intellect you could already get 3+ skeletons. (the skellies have a duration of 10s adjusted by your intellect; the linger mechanic is broken with them).

Just an amusing (to me) observation. For the first time ever (literally!) I rolled a new game and chose Eder as a rogue. Not a fighter, not a swashbuckler. A rogue. (I have the sneaking suspicion that nearly all people also always roll Eder as at least part-fighter.) I don't play many tanky characters, mostly casters. At least in the starting area, the game really seems to assume (esp on PotD) that you have a tank of some sort. Many knockouts and reloads later before even hitting level 2... Was actually surprised by how thoroughly I smashed into a difficulty wall, not even yet at Gorecci St. Not having constant recovery => eder gets knocked out very quickly and my squishy is swarmed. What's particularly rough is that skeletons do a lot of damage if you're not a priest who can Holy Radiance them all away in one go. Learned my lesson, and I'm re-rolling Eder as at least part-fighter. Just a warning in case you're also feeling "adventurous."

you don't actually have to make the resistance go away/switch between chants. for some reason, the game checks again and re "applies" the resistance chant effect even if it's just refreshing. i definitely have resistance songs that are a single resistance chant on loop, and it works like a charm. it means troubadour can wipe out even tier 3 afflictions really quickly. it's only applied at the start of the chant. which means it is super powerful for a troubadour, who can refresh it every 3s. it is still good for other chanters to start a song wtih, so that when you switch to a song (or after an invocation) everyone gets an immediate 10-pt shield, which has a more immediate lift on your survivability than ancient memory (which is still very good, especially as a follow up to the 10-pt shield). it's also just a general great party utility. plenty of boss fights where it would be nice for aloth to squeeze in a slicken or thrust of tattered veils and actually have it do something. (btw i've seen belranga get up to like 66 concentration, real great to have stumbling words when that happens)

absolutely the worst regression of the turn-based betas to 5.0 patch. sigh... i forget the game is many years old already. part of it is the death of moore's law for gaming/computing, but the combination of the graphical choices (detailed 2D-ish environments) and creative art direction, it still looks fantastic even after playing newer AAA games. really? which? any, quite the ancient thread that's gotten necro-ed. mechanically, multiclassing and per-encounter are great step forwards, though i imagine the latter is more controversial even today. After playing some other newer RTwP and trying to replay the IE enhanced editions, I really do not miss the eternal cycle of pre-buffing for combat, so I think this is a great step forward. mechanically, double-inversions and power-level scaling are huge steps back. double-inversions amount for so much endless confusion even today. sure in poe1, pure additive system was hard to balance for maluses, but double-inversions are just so hard to reason about (beyond a few common values I have in my head, I still have to bust out the calculator for everything else). as i've said elsewhere, if they do something like this again, they should just do a pure-additive system and carve out an exception purely just for AR/PEN and for graze/crits, that's it. and nothing wrong with power-level scaling in principle, but the way it happens in practice is extremely obtuse. it's never clear anywhere in-game, which i think was a deliberate decision early on so that designers had freedom to get abilities to scale in particular ways, but after all the re-balancing, power-level scaling is pretty much standardized everywhere (except, as far as i can tell, for chants and carnage) and is just a needlessly hidden mechanic. non-mechanically i'm really glad they stretched and did a polynesian setting. too bad it seemed to have turned a lot of people away. however, i thought the crit path really should've been a *bit* more intense. act iv is extremely anti-climactic IMO (i think I even had an early bug report asking if some encounters are missing because it felt so empty), and the ease with which you can breeze through the crit path makes it hard to invest in the stakes of what's happening. going back to an iconic example: BG2 was open for a huge chunk of the first game, but then became extremely linear (with limited flexibility in the underdark) so that you could actually invest yourself in the main story arc. the dlcs really make up for it though.

all i can say is best of luck! i was going to suggest ancient as the better choice, but i'm honestly not sure - the mushrooms are extremely good summons even in a party, but they don't have engagement, so in practice i don't know how useful they are in solo. either way, i'm eager to hear out it works out

oh yeah, i said wizard but upon reflection it really is the perennial general "caster" power curve problem. i think maybe ciphers miss out on it, but it's kinda wild how much power opens up for other single-class casters. priests go from support characters to being solid DPS characters as well with just the addition of those two extra tiers. don't get me started on greater maelstrom...

yeah, i keep trying other CRPGs but I'm sad to say that Deadfire is the only modern game that scratches my particular itch (though I'm keeping an open mind to Wrath of the Righteous). I found Everything Bad to be subtly hilarious, almost like a troll challenge at times, compared to a more "normal" background. I highly recommend it as an option to increase difficulty without going up to the step of putting on Magran's Fires (or to further increase the difficulty after Magran's Fires). It works best if you don't just immediately fill up your party with hirelings when you can.