thelee

my main concern is that as far as game mechanics go (which the DLCs didn't have to do), je sawyer has been the driving force for every major decision i've liked with since icewind dale 2. i'm sure the institutional strength at obs is good, and jes taking a back seat would happen inevitably, but it does make me a wee bit nervous going forward.

lolwut happened here

IIRC grounded has an active core team of like 12 people, which is seriously impressive. i'm sure other people will surge in as it nears release and bits and pieces are being picked up by others as the need arises, but that seems very smart and the success so far seems like they are punching far above their weight. i think some of the deadfire burnout will have to recede into the distant past before obs feels like picking up poe3 as a project, but it seems like they could do a smaller project, smartly, and well. i think step #1 is avoiding crowdfunding which would have them making promises that end up not making business sense but still have to keep. alot of the vestigial quicksand features i can think of in poe1 *and* deadfire seem purely like a result of early ideas for a crowdfunding that they had to keep (poe1 stronghold, golden-plated npcs, poe1 having two quest hubs, and then of course obviously deadfire ship combat and VO, among othe rthings).

for a wood elf (adjust as necessary) 10 might/13 con/19 dex/10 per/18 int/7 resolve then take deadfire archipelago as a background for an additional +1 dex make sure to pick marked prey as your ranger skill, you absolutely cannot go wrong with it and you will never respec out of it. i would take escape as your rogue ability because the mobility and bonus deflection will be very helpful in avoiding danger and getting into range and you can lean on other party members to help debuff early on. pick up blinding strike as your main rogue offensive skill later, you can upgrade it to confounding blind to utterly punish foes you are ganging up on. with 18 intellect it should last a decent amount of rounds to let you pile on the deflection penalty. (this incidentally is an ability that is utterly a nightmare to be on the receiving end of.) for skills i would choose explosives. cinder bomb, sparkcrackers are easy to make and will help you debuff foes. at high skill levels, stun bombs are an amazing lifesaver. (there are also some nice gloves that give you free sparkcrackers to use per rest, and another set that boosts your explosives even further). the other bombs are plenty useful too. pick a passive skill that fits with your theme, and if you have no idea, pick religion or survival for the synergy with saint omaku's mercy (a pretty decent war bow) now, stop lurking on the forums and go play the game!

depending on your ranger build, if you want to be completely optimal, perception is actually not that important. rangers get so much bonus accuracy (+10 marked prey, +5 marksman, +10 stalker's link, possibly +10 survival of the fittest, up to +20 from hunter's claw/fang/beast's claw, all stacking with each other) that you're better off boosting other offensive stats (dex, might). but that sort of depends on how much micromanagement you're willing to invest in the character. hunter's claw requires metagaming and prep work (not a lot, but consistent amounts). stalker's link requires you to use your ghost pet effectively. but if you just do marked prey, marksman, and survival of the fittest, that's already +25 accuracy right there. similarly, rogues get so much bonus damage that you're better off boosting one of the other offensive stats (dex, perception). (the mathematical reason why you want to invest in other stats is for the same reason why if you want to maximize the area or volume of a quadrangle or cuboid, you draw a square or a cube. damage, accuracy, and dex are the three different "axes" of damage, so given a fixed total for all three to distribute, to maximize the "volume" (damage) they should all be as equivalent as possible (a stat "cube").) that pretty much leaves dex as the king stat to invest in. intellect is always a good choice since you probably have lots of abilities you want to last longer (could also be very important for getting past rounding cutoffs in turn-based mode). you could sprinkle remaining points however much you want (might/dex gives you roughly linear returns so is always worth investing in). some con might be useful just so you can survive incidental spell hits or enemy rogues that like to escape to the backlines. as for skills, it's really your call. marked prey is the only big one i suggest everyone get from a ranger. i like arterial strike for rogue (it is great for opening fights and kiting enemies with), but may not be as effective in turn-based mode. deathblows is extremely powerful so you want to make sure you have a diversity of debuffs to trigger it; perception debuffs count as two afflictions (flanked + the actual perception affliction itself) so blinding strike (+upgrades), or debilitating strike are good to have. ranger gets a few debuffs that are useful. (diversity of debuffs is handy if you run across perception resistent or perception immune foes and can no longer rely on a simple distracted (or any perception affliction for immune foes) to trigger deathblows) edit: better than skills recommendations, i have two anti-recommendations. as i mentioned before, sap and shadowing step require a melee weapon for rogue, so you should probably avoid those. hunter's claw also requires a melee weapon for ranger, but it's so good when maxed out that i just equip two melee weapons for my ranger for a few fights to build it up before switching back to ranged.

not bad, i would point out that to get the most out of kind wayfarer you'd have to be close to your party members because the aoe on wayfarer's flames of devotion healing is small. you'd also want to dual-wield ranged weapons to max it out (dual-wielding weapons and the spammability of flames of devotion means you could be be among the best healers in the game just by spamming it over and over as needed) i think vanilla rogue is fine. trickster has a lot of abilities which tend to be more useful if you are closer to the enemy (mirror image, repulsive visage, displaced image) so if you're not going to get much mileage out of them (and they all compete in guile usage with normal abilities), you can still debuff and pummel foes without sacrificing some sneak attack damage. (and the ghost heart has their own set of abilities to help debuff enemies, espeically since you may not be relying on your pet ghost to do as much)

a sc chanter is extremely powerful, but you have to be OK with turning them into a summoner/sniper, which it sounds like you aren't keen on (avoiding ranger pets). trickster, debonaire, and vanilla rogue work great for a chanter MC. streetfighter requires a lot of metagaming and i'm not sure they're nearly as good in turn-based mode. my current run is a mixed melee/ranged debonaire MC and absolutely wrecks in any fight involving kith. if you want to combo, chanter gets a charm invocation, which will let the debonaire land (mostly) free critical hits on lots of foes even when not fighting kith. edit: an assassin/chanter MC would be extra bad because your chanting will almost immediately break shadowing beyond, and depending on the chant may almost immediately break smoke veil. there's not a lot of "trap" choices in deadfire, but that's arguably one of them.

i'm not a cipher expert, but i can try: i think mostly people who voice this concern are thinking about real time, not turn-based, out of a concern that two handed weapons tend to be less responsive in fights than dual-wielding. barely matters for turn-based. i don't know the specific reason why whispers would com eup. it also behooves to keep in mind that deadfire is a game that is very forgiving to different choices, so when people talk about "best choice" they're not saying that "if you don't do X the game will be miserably hard" which can be the case for other systems (especially older D&D style systems), they're talking micro-optimizations or possibly degenerate metagaming combos. i would not put too much attention to people who stress a lot about a specific build point. for psyblade, devoted would be an excellent pair with a cipher if you're gungho about using two-handes words. +2 PEN would solve two-handed sword's main weakness, which is low inherent penetration. Disciplined Barrage will give you a perception inspiration to help land two-handed sword hits with the modal active (which otherwise penalizes accuracy) in addition to boosting cipher power accuracy. On turn-based mode, chance to hit is more generous so the higher damage potential of a two-handed sword with modal on will really help with focus generation. ciphers--especially on turn-based mode--seem to have an extreme action economy issue - they have to attack to generate focus, and then you have to spend a turn to actually use the powers. as a result, i might stay away from an ascendant and steer you to a beguiler (whom you can set up to generate or recover focus just from using powers) or soulblade (who can dump all their focus into a single attack if need be, in addition to getting cheaper shred abilities). i would also not stress too much. while your class and first level abilities and stats are fixed, you can respec everything else. if you're struggling a lot, just go with your gut of what seems like it would be the most fun, don't worry about getting it wrong, and just say "**** it." it took me a lot of runs of deadfire to really figure things out back and forth, and i just made peace with the fact that all my runs would be sub-optimal in some way (and most of the time i put together builds that are thematically fun rather than optimal, so they are sub-optimal anyway, and it's not a big deal if they are sub-optimal because that's not my angle. i can still beat the game and megabosses on the hardest difficulty with various challenges enabled, so being sub-optimal does not lock content away from me). garotte is extremely close distance. it does not use your weapon or weapon range, it's a special attack at close range. rogues can make for great snipers due to the ability to inflict tons of sneak attack damage at range, and most of their attacks are agnostic about what weapon they use (pay attention to ability descriptions though; sap and shadow step require a melee weapon in your primary slot iirc). in fact in my experience, on higher difficulties some of your worst fights will be against rogue archers who stay out of reach of your party and sneak attack and use things like finishing blow or blinding strike with a crossbow or some such. so i can imagine that doing that yourself would be pretty effective. chanters are also decent support snipers imo. they come with a great chant for ranged attacks, and being at range gives them the flexibility to move in and out of range for chants and invocations. don't pick up a skald though because the skald chance for critical hit only applies for melee weapons. monks and monk MCs can make for surprisingly good snipers because of dance with death, which will generate wounds without needing to get hit and give you up to +15 accuracy. swift strikes will make you fast. i dont' think swift flurry works with ranged weapons, but lightning strikes will add a lightning lash to your ranged attacks. at high levels you can use long pain or instruments of pain to use melee weapons as if you were a sniper, which is really powerful (ranged weapons typically are balanced to be weaker than melee due to their relative safety, so using melee weapons at long range is an improvement in dps). if you merely just don't want a permanent pet, a ghost heart ranger is an excellent choice. instead of a pet, they have a fast-cast summon that you can send suicidally to distract enemies or go for squishy mages in the back line.

also you'll probably recruit more help if there's a specific build type you're going for - some theme, some class, etc. an open-ended question is just too overwhelming in possibilities.

i use a nice pencil, eraser, and notepad there is a quick level 20 cheat - i think you just give yourself like a million xp. if i need to run tests i have an old game with a save in an inn and i just recruit a level 19 adventurer.

unfortunately i think the type of people who frequent these forums a lot or are active on wikis probably prefers the RtWP mode. and just by the nature of the beast, most of the videos and stuff were made early in deadfire's lifecycle, before turn-based mode got added. i think also part of the problem for other people updating builds is that between turn-based and RtWP some builds barely get affected at all, whereas other builds might get dramatically affected, so it can be frequently hard to tell what builds need attention. be the change you want to see! try putting together a build and write it up and get feedback.

yes, but i think it was dropped for BG2? i do very much remember being surprised the first time i ever knocked someone out. oblivion also has non-lethal damage, and as a result both fallout 3 and new vegas also have non-lethal damage. however, it might have only really been close to balanced in new vegas - in oblivion it was either completely useless or utterly broken.

not familiar with gothic; ideally it would be a solution that's not save scummable. because even with oblivion/morrowind (and daggerfall?) you could just not bother with the consequences by save/reloading. again, we're circling back to something that speaks to thresholds "uncontested" rolls. either you succeed or don't, maybe with some near-miss. there could be some abstraction/minigame layer in between to make it more immersive or involved for the player. i could probably spitball some mechanics or stealing minigames that i think would work better, but eh i don't think avowed's dev team is going to be reading this thread for an idea from some rando

obviously everyone has their limits, and that limit is going to vary. even if the reactivity is very thorough, it could be so extreme that it's not worth keeping - a typical fallout 2 playthrough i would just instant reload if a random NPC or child wandered into my burst range; for whatever reason i was just game for whatever consequences happened (same with my wife and whacking father). on the other hand, if there are too many guardrails, then RPGs lose something special that makes RPGs RPGs. veering slightly off topic, i think this is a perennial problem with theft. in earlier RPGs, the reactive consequences of being caught were so severe that there was effectively no consequence - you just save-scummed or didn't bother. in modern RPGs, theft is such a minor problem (tiny reputation hits, bribery of guards) that it similarly has effectively no reactivity and no consequence - it doesn't matter that you get caught. on that note, i think probably oblivion-ish and earlier elder scrolls handled it the best with a jail sentence and some stat punishments, but nothing terribly severe or terribly trivial. but even then, it's kind of eh... i would love someone to "solve" theft/pickpocketing as a mechanic.

I think that's an example of the "you can kill everyone" ethos done not as well. In New Vegas, it meant you burnt a lot of bridges but still had a viable path to finish the game. In Deadfire, it frequently amounts to "oh I still get a key off their body and/or their spirit talks to me and the quest goes on largely as normal." I still appreciate the freedom of the latter, but it's nothing like the former where there were real consequences to your actions but you could still beat the game. On the contrary, I think this is the place where crpgs have historically excelled. It's less about playing a psychopath, it's more about a game that is committed to the player as a Role Player that it will go to extreme lengths to accommodate the player's actions. The ultimate test of that is "can a player kill X NPC and still finish the game in some way?" I still remember the first time I accidentally killed a kid in Fallout 2 (burst weapons and such). In a modern game--ignoring the ethics of depicting violence on children (and, in some countries, legality)--what would likely have happened instead is that the kid is immortal or "essential" so will just stand up again after a few seconds, or everyone within like a 500 mile radius becomes irrevocably mad at you and fail a bunch of quests and the game basically breaks and you have to reload. In Fallout 2, while the town got pissed at me, I was still able to flee (no "you cannot leave/fast travel during combat" message), and the effects were: instant vilification reputation with the town massive negative hit to karma you get a special "perk" called "child killer" for the rest of the game you are hunted by serious bounty hunters who are out to avenge the town/kid As someone who had mostly played highly linear JRPGs up until that point, the mere fact that I could do that, and the game could still continue on, with plenty of in-game consequences was an astounding level of reactivity. It is unfortunately probably the high water mark of reactivity that I've seen in a game ever since. I'm not saying that I want a game where you can kill a kid (i think it's a little perturbing how some grognards fixate on literally this as a feature in particular), but I do appreciate an RPG that goes out of its way to try to accommodate player mayhem, especially if it's unintentional. For all the flak Bethesda gets these days, I remember watching my wife play FO4. The first time she phased into the institute and saw "Sean" and Father, she half-seriously yelled IRL "give me back my son!" and immediately whacked Father to death without letting Father talk (and without knowing that Father is in fact, your real son). I couldn't help but laugh out loud at that, but more impressive was FO4 adapted to that as a real option, and I got to watch my wife fleeing a very angry Institute and continuing on with the Railroad.

i thin kthere's an AI scripting mod that opens up alot of options, because as it stands you can't do this. i set up a script that has a timer cooldown of 3s and that is "good enough" for me.

yikes, the way the death shield might be implemented, it might only be checked at like, literal near death (much like watchful presence can interfere with death and heals you instead), which may be impossible if paralyzed. that sucks! i'll have to update my guide with this gotcha. it would appear to be a developer error - other effects (watchful presence, auranic activating last trick) completely ignore things like prone or afflictions, so clearly it's possible to script things so this wouldn't happen. i had a bizarre thing happen to me last night in FS, where mirke got hit with petrification at near death. i don't think the developers ever really anticipated players being hit with petrification, because boy oh boy did it suck. combat ended, but mirke was still petrified! after a save/load, i could move her around and she would respond to my clicks, but in combat she would have a full recovery bar that would never disappear. resting didn't help. suppress affliction didn't help. i had to take my pair of engwithan bracers and repeatedly re-equip it on mirke and that repeated resistance let me dispel it. if mirke had already had resistance, i think i would have just been screwed and mirke would've been effectively dead.

the likelihood that having a gpu in an insufficient bandwidth PCIe slot is so vanishingly low that the greater risk likely for the layperson is by opening up their PC they short some critical component.

it's frustrating, but probably best not to impugn malicious motives on devs who went above-and-beyond to support a game with less-than-stellar sales. someone speculated that it likely has to do with the fact that unlike poe1 there are weapons and effects that have their own AoE, so due to engine limitations it meant a tradeoff between seeing carnage visual radius or those other relevant radius. i don't know if phenomenon managed to find a work around to this, or if their mod simply made the tradeoff in a different direction.

PEN 9 is about as high as a spell normally gets. Keep in mind though that spells have higher PEN than the base listed effect due to ability-level scaling - the higher tier a spell is, the higher an inherent bonus it has to PEN, to the tune of +.5 per tier past one. So a PEN 7 tier 5 spell should have by default an additional +2 PEN on top of its base PEN 7 and any other PL scaling (using spellshaping to shrink the area of effect of a spell will give you an additional .25 PEN in addition to other bonuses, and depending on the sitaution that could mean bumping you up a penetration level). edit - i mentioned that sacred immolation has stupidly high PEN, and it's because not only is it a PEN 9 effect, but it also gets an additional +3 PEN just from that tier-based scaling. plus scion of flame and PL scaling I generally don't have any PEN problems in many fights (14 fire PEN) without needing to worry about champion's boon or other such pen boosts. also make sure you are picking up the various elemental PEN talents, if you use them a lot. the +1 PEN can make a huge difference. edit: minoletta's piercing burst has abnormally high PEN, at base 15. in some cases that's enough to get an additional +30% damage bonus on its already decent dmage just from overpenetration.

According to https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/afflictions-and-inspirations they are not. Mechanically they do identical things, but petrification is treated as a T4 effect, so resistance will only turn it into a normal paralyze. You can absolutely mess up even megabosses who only have resistances by using a petrification effect (i believe all of them are vulnerable to this, though whether or not you can surmount their defenses are another issue). edit: this is really obvious with belranga, who after enough minions killed will be periodically paralyzed by the minion spiders, who use their petrify poison indiscriminately. edit 2: this is really useful with the tier 9 wizard spell petrification, which petrifies *permanently* if used against a near-death foe, and this still works when resisted down to a paralyze. in practice it is not fully useful against hauane o whe and likely sigilmaster auranic, but i have definitely done a run which completely immobilized the oracle in FS, dorudugan, and belranga (with minor help against hauane). edit 3: hmmm i haven't tried it against auranic, but using petrification against auranic could soft-lock the game. auranic has a death shield until she uses last trick or all obelisks are dead, so permanently paralyzing auranic while an obelisk is still up (and shielded) might lock you in the fight.

it is extremely relevant to point out that Grounded is a co-op/multiplayer game primarily focused on survival/building, which means you need to have the third-person character animations and assets perfected anyway and switching between the two cameras doesn't have as much of an impact on game mechanics. Having a third person camera then seems minimal work. A single-player game is different, especially where combat is super important. Playing FO3/NV/Skyrim/FO4 in third person is obviously worse and clunkier than single-player. (Similarly, if you take a good third-person game, you can't just put the camera inside their head and expect it to work.)

anecdotally i've seen people complain --even with SSDs-- about console load times. so it's possible.

yeah, it doesn't solve the general problem, it is more of a "soft-landing" for when you don't meet the thresholds. in deadfire, sometimes a near-miss means you get the same outcome but with an injury, or missing out on some extra reward or something like that, or failing the check but you get one injury instead of two. yeah, intuitively in deadfire/poe/disco elysium misses seem less bad. in fallout/skyrim it can be *extremely* frustrating if you just leveled up and you miss a hard check by one point.

it is certainly odd to fail a check, without warning, just because you're at 74 speech instead of 75 speech. those kinds of situations are frustrating, because unlike an enemy (where in many RPGs you can quickly tooltip their level and basic stats), there's no real warning about how hard it is to convince someone of something. i was thinking that there could be "near-misses" or "partial success" which deadfire occasionally does for scripted events and lockpicking (3 lockpicks isntead of 1). but this requires a lot of planning to be meaningful, but could be nice.