thelee

sorry, to clarify, the problem when it was super common was that you crit-gibbed an enemy. something about the gibbing (which already interacts oddly with some effects like cipher transfer spells) would clear item properties. i think they fixed like 99% of cases, but i don't know if the remaining 1% still has to do with crit-gibbing an enemy.

I doubt it; I think it's a pretty deep engine bug. It's happened to me a few times, very rare, and unfortunately something that emerged in later patches and was never fully fixed. In one run I had to reload, in another I only discovered it too late and had to completely abandon the item. god I can't imagine if it had happened in anyone's ultimate run. When it was more prevalent it had something to do with death-by-critical hits. I don't know if it's still related to that.

i didn't see it confirmed elsewhere this thread, but yes, firebrand benefits with extra PEN. the wizard ranged spell kalakoth's minor blights also benefit from the spell PEN keywords, but each blight benefits separately (so you need all four to get +1 PEN across the entire range of blights). i don't think other summoned weapons benefit from any keyword effects, directly at least (only longer duration from bonus PL for a conjurer, for example).

in particular, the fists as a base weapon are already better than any other base weapon (iirc it's essentially already like a 30% lash on a weapon like a sabre). for pure damage dealing via summoned weapons it might be hard to beat woedica fists.

I had a bit of a summoned weapon subtheme with my current sorcerer. Firebrand + various wizard buffs (eventually Draconic Fury at tier 7), plus the aforementioned Ring of Focused Flame. Taste of the Hunt at tier 2 (though probably only one casting because it shares with Firebrand) is a nice spot heal and leaves some lasting damage. It's only a subtheme because between druid and wizard spells (even if most are fast-cast self-buffs) there's a lot of action economy constraints, but doing 100-ish dmg per melee hit ain't shabby when you're running low on spells (great sword + legendary + modal [helped by ring of focused flame] plus 40% fire lash plus 15% slashing lash plus occasional crits + overpen), and those melee hits come relatively fast (schwungvoll, +15% action speed from deletrious alacrity of motion, plus druid soulbound SSS armor, plus helm of the falcon). Makes sunlance the spell look extremely crappy; a highish spell slot and longer cast time to do less single-target damage?? against fire immunes or fire aborbers, being part wizard helps because you can summon lance or one of the two staffs, though firebrand does a stupid amount of damage compared to those options in normal situations. (though llengrath's staff is fun simply for knocking people around and preventing them from doing much of anything)

sporelings are wildly good early on, but they only get more health as you level up (unfortunately very few druid summons scale well). so they won't help nearly as much late game, but they will make for some impressive bullet sponges nonetheless. truth be told, i hardly ever use wild growth, maybe like a few times in an entire run for when i'm almost out of spells and i desperately need to keep a summon alive for some extra damage soaking. what i sometimes do is focus on MTG color combinations. like doing a multi-guild party. (or one of the wedge sets) sometimes i find that it's easier to find thematic overlap with MTG in that way. might not be exactly what you want. but for example, a decay druid is very BG/golgari, even if it's not a great "black" or "green" match on its own.

this is totally my jam; the first build i posted here was drawn straight from MTG lore: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/case-study-1-umezawa i also use the mtg color pie to explain wizard schools: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/wizard as a perennial blue mage and lots of hours of deadfire, i'm actually thinking you probably want to be a pure wizard, and probably an evoker. I know "evoker" sounds a bit red-ish, but this is a school specialization that gets you both enchantment (which has spell reflection, call to slumber, spell stealing), illusion (invisibility, mirror image, mind-based debuffs), and a great set of countermagic (thrust of tattered veils & minoletta's concussive missiles are evocation interrupts, concelhaut's crushing doom is A+ illusion interrupt). if you can't get over the flavor of being an evoker whose native home is tossing fireballs, then i recommend transmuter instead - you still get decent countermagic (slicken is transmutor, concelhaut's crushing doom is illusion, a friend school), and a relevant +2 PL bonus to illusion (for all your debuffs) (edit: i don't know why i said you get +2 PL to illusion, you get +2 PL to transmutation; you can do illusionist to get +2 PL. but +2 PL to slicken and other transmutation is still good if you do that). single-class wizard gets you some extremely powerful end-game magic, regardless of your school. this kind of stomps over your black color choice selection (blood mage part), but it's just a suggestion for something that seems a lot more "blue-y" to me. in deadfire, i feel like blue and black overlap a lot in terms of mtg color wheel. if you don't care about as much about the countermagic part of it, then i think something like what you suggest is great for battlefield manipulation. though i might suggest a psion, because they get a unique cipher power which is basically a pure interrupt (e.g. counterspell) that eventually you have enough focus generation to use nonstop if needed. for synergy I recommend instead a shifter/stalker. I actually rolled this in a game and got so bored by how much i steamrolled fights on PotD that i started over with something not as simply powerful the bonus AR from stalker combines extremely well with shapeshifting; by default most forms give you one step above medium armor (but with no recovery) and the bonus AR basically puts you into heavy armor. boar form is extremely powerful as a shifter because your DoT effect will last for way too long (a bug in your favor) and high ranger accuracy will help you do lots of damage. bear form is super tanky with the bonus stalker AR. it requires a bit of micromanagement, especially since you might be leaning on this char to do healing, so you'll have to more actively juggle shapeshifting and spell casting since you won't be able to cast while shifted.

tbf, compared to poe1, soulbound gear are not necessarily as such tent-pole items here. i remember going out of my way to get all soulbound gear in poe1, here i only bother if it's particularly necessary for a build. edit: it's been a while, but i don't remember many *interesting* unique items in poe1 (many of them were normal magic weapons with a fancy name). there are tons in poe2, which you can enchant with special enchantments. that fills in a lot of the gaps that soulbound items fulfilled in poe1.

yeah, MC can be overwhelming with choices esp if it's your first time. also, there's more room for error. while it shouldn't be too much of a problem on lower difficulties, unlike poe (which tried to make all sorts of gameplay viable), there are definitely more character pitfalls in poe2, if only due to just the insane amount of customization options.

you choose right at the start. right after you pick gender and race, you choose single/multiclass, and then you can pick subclasses as part of that process. you can respec later in the game, but you can never change the decisions you make at level 1 (which means your class/subclass or single/multiclass picks are permanent). single-class you advance up the "levels" of abilities every odd level at first, and then slow down starting at 13 to every three levels (13, 16, 19). multi-class you advance up the "levels" of abilities every three levels the entire time (1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19). normally you gain two ability points every time you unlock a new tier, and one ability point otherwise (multi-class has to spend their two ability points for a new tier, one on each class)

there's a whole heck of a lot of ways that rangers fit in-universe to deadfire, so i wouldn't worry. here are some minimal-spoilery examples of how a ranger can fit into the world, some thematic hyptotheticals, some in-game examples: pirate, pirate sharpshooters. bounty hunters and trackers large military presence in the archipelago (Maia, a story character ranger, is a sharpshooter/scout for the royal deadfire company) a contingent of boreal dwarfs who have settled an island some islands are bigger and have dense foliage and need trackers/rangers one of several ways to refer to the eighth "level" of abilities that (single-class, and only single-class) characters can get (multi-class stop at the seventh). PL is short for "power-level." I've personally taken to start referring to it by other means (I say "tier") because it's a pretty jargon-y acronym that is also confusingly the same as a only-kind-of-related "power level" mechanic that scales your ability power.

try pallegina as a chanter. Herald is quite a beefy MC, can easily be a melee tank. Instead of picking up summons, pick up things like "Her Revenge" or the Reny Daret frightened blast (when upgraded to also grant penalty to all defenses is pretty brutal). if you can afford to wait, Vatnir might make for an interesting priest/chanter. His priest subclass comes with lots of free offensive spells, which makes for an interesting take on priest. have you tried maia as ranged dps? she's pretty much S-tier ranged ranger due to her unique subclass and her unique armor. even though ranger lack fancy abilities, in my current run maia was #1 in party damage for 99% of the game (until my caster hit level 20, and still may not be true if pet damage is included). A single-classed Xoti can also be good. Can help tank early on with her free small shield proficiency, there is a great monk small shield, and any single-classed monk will eventually single-handedly carry your party if you want it to (whispers of the wind + stalking cloak)

Flavor-wise, dwarf with a boar may really want this hunting bow, which grants special bonuses for a dwarf wielder. A ranger can get stupid amounts of accuracy, so once you get stalker's link and marked for prey you could leave the hunting bow modal on (-50% recovery time, but -15 accuracy) without hurting your acc relative to the enemies and wreck house. Only problem with that suggestion is that hunting bows have low PEN, which is a major problem on higher difficulties. I would recommend Sharpshooter ranger SC (who can get close for bonus PEN), or an MC with a devoted fighter (+2 PEN with hunting bow, but you go all in on it). Just a suggestion since you specifically called out dwarf. much of the ranger's big wins can be easily had with multiclass as well (the stupid high accuracy), but there are a couple of good end-game abilities. I have enjoyed heart seeker in my current run, which is a bit skill-intensive to use versus other abilities, but is really really good in the right setup.

what's supposed to happen: 1. you defeat ner 2. you go inside and find vatnir 3. come back out, ner gets back up and then sucked into the vytmadh how does "the dragon just die?" any idea? i wonder if some mechanism that is thoroughly killing ner is breaking some trigger.

i believe they should have fixed it - it was in the pre-5.0 issues. i don't do TB a lot though so I can't personally vouch for it.

not that i've been able to figure out, unfortunately. it's a shame, because especially the knockdown ability is absolutely game-changing to be able to spam. i ended up getting a gamer keyboard (not strictly for deadfire, it was when pandemic WFH began and i was spending a lot more time at home) where I made a macro that could spam a hotkey over and over, and I just quick-hotkey knockdown (or any other weapon ability) and use the macro. works well enough, but obviously is a financial investment.

i also picked an enchanter for a recent run (MC). yeah, by far the best thing enchantment seems to be simply the schools it has access to. I rely enough on self-buffing, expose vulnerabilities, and call to slumber that the +2 PL is still worth it over a generalist. Free Action has saved my skin a couple times, too. but nothing compared to evoker's bonus (or even conjuration, even if it's a bit of an antisynergy) the tier 7 dragon enchantment spell is pretty darn good though.

aaaaaw yeah, that's the stuff! scratch that, now THAT'S the stuff (just had some grandparents visit for a week and got some quality gaming in while the kids were off playing with them)

I did a shaman that was a corpse-eater and skaen. it was... alright. wael is probably a better choice, i just wanted to do something different. (edit: i would also not pick corpse-eater in the future. it's alright, but adds to the action economy issues when i'm busy eating corpses) i would recommend against magran mostly because the action economy is not great with barbarian - if yo uactually want to carnage it up, the more the game goes on the more spells you'll be casting and the fewer actual weapon attacks you'll be making. another reason why wael [to a lesser extent skaen] is good choice - fast spells. writs are great, but if you're thinking about a barbarian the most useful one early on for a MC is easily taken care of by a barbarian - the lack of engagement writ is very good for survivability/mobility, but a barbarian can get spirit frenzy which will stagger everything very easily which also does the same thing (procs off carnage and any other ability, including priest spells; don't upgrade to spirit tornado which breaks this unintentional stagger-happy spreading). Writ of War and Sorcery are pretty good late game MC woedica effects. Frightened are ineffective in shutting down enemy abilities that can still be extremely annoying (wizard summons, arcane reflection, priest/druid buffs, lay on hands) and these give you ways to shut them down. There will still be some abilities that can get through though.

there are some cases where you can take advantage of this (a bit, or at least it won't hurt as much). e.g. two of the shield modals give you a recovery penalty. many weapon modals give you a worse recovery penalty. it means that if you're doing sword and board and you turn on a weapon modal, you can turn on your shield modal for no downside.

a more up to date version is here, which covers your specific question a bit more directly: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/paladin TL;DR: hirelings obey their own disposition but are affected by the WATCHER's actions, so you have to watch out a bit. Obsidian-made NPCs (Pallegina, Vatnir, Xoti) have *no* favored dispositions, so they fit in any party without penalty [but also get no bonuses]

wow if this is consistent, this significantly boosts the utility of that chant

oh yeah, that forum link is still mostly true (i skimmed it to double-check), but a easier-to-digest format i put here (with tables)

the base damage is still calculated internally - it's only at the "very final" step that the immunity prevents it from occurring. the lash is based off of damage before this "very final" step, and even before PEN is considered. So you should still be able to do burn damage. In fact, because lash damage is calculated before even PEN is considered, there are some narrow situations when a lash does a different damage type where this means that it will do more damage than your main weapon. (E.G. your main weapon underpenetrates by -75% but you have a 30% lash)

dah! i'm so unused to caring about confusion as an affliction that it doesn't occur to me how easily it is to deal with it. This makes me remember that Wild Mare always has a supply of Wael's Wind in stock, too, which grants mind affliction resistance. now i'm curious about combining berserker with fury... still worried about the raw damage though late game.