thelee

this is not even a thing in many table top systems, and they tend to be full of dice rolls and chance. notably, at least in 3.5e/pathfinder, skill checks by default cannot critically fail or critically succeed. because tying your shoelaces is not something someone fails miserably at 1/20 times, and trying to recall an obscure piece of arcane lore is not something a random peasant can do 1/20 times.

this would be more credible if your other complaint in the other thread didn't reveal that you assume incomplete quests are a bug. i'm very curious to know what people who think deadfire is filled with bugs are doing or what they think are the bugs. i get maybe... one crash bug every few runs. the only thing i run into really is just the can't-use-potions-without-disabling-AI bug (which is annoying, but has an easy workaround).

Whatever effect Grave Calling uses is not a normal affliction, so it appears to bypass resistances and even immunities. Definitely seems like one of them bugs in the player's favor.

don't forget sun & moon flail, it has +2 fire spell PL. since it can be bought, you might be able to get it even earlier.

i'm actually a little bit less front-loady with buffs. i have like one or two i always cast, but the rest i treat more situationally so i can keep spell slots reserved in case i need something else. it's easy to empty out a priest's spell casts with nothing but buffs, but there are plenty of options. it may be a little less "optimal" but it feels more fun to play because it's far less rote (it also helps with action economy since i'm not just trying to go down a huge list of spells before combat ends). as an example, i might open early level fights a lot with dire blessing, but by the time i pick up devotions, i might just rely on devotions and only use dire blessing if i need to get rid of or protect myself from blind/disorient. champion's boon i almost always treat conditionally, either to boost up a tank with mob stance, give someone more engagement, or help with penetration. never an all-in buff. even triumph, i don't bother with in easier trash fights, or in really hard boss fights. regardless of all that a martial priest MC like xoti might have more action economy issues because her bonus spells aren't like skaen or wael which are fast and easily usable (except for harvest), so regardless of what else you do trying to be competent at martial abilities and competent at casting might feel constrained. BDD + Salvation of Time are definitely potentially degeneratively good, but unless you are specifically gearing or metagaming for it is not a particularly huge power spike on its own. I've had plenty of priests that don't rely on that combo that are still plenty effective. and like haplok said there are plenty of SC power spikes. I like CoP much better at higher levels. Early on (e.g. right when you unlock it) I find the duration a tad too short, but PL scaling helps make it a good boost in survivability.

Aha, I suspected that it might (mentioned it in build notes). In that case, as a possible alternate option wizards would have better overall offensive spell coverage, but as an empowered spell it's hard to compare to Holy Fire imo, except when trying to interrupt bosses or a single hard enemy (Holy Fire also has synergy with the other fire stuff). And yeah, priests with weyc's is nice. I tried to avoid calling out or encouraging weyc:s robe because with full party brilliant perpetually, pretty much any build becomes "nice"

lol, i ended up getting a gaming keyboard that let me create macros, so now i have a few macros set up for the always-start-of-fight-party-buffs. obviously not always an option for people, but it was also my i'm-working-from-home-during-pandemic-because-america-sucks-at-dealing-with-this keyboard so i considered it a productivity investment as well. yeah i always found fireball kind of an underwhelming spell, but it's popular. it's not like in the older games where it would scale generously to higher levels (if you ever played baldur's gate and its ilk). you definitely need to be dropping things like delayed fireball, ninagauth's shadowflame, torrent of flame in late game if you want to keep your damage up. it also doesn't help that beast of winter is the first time you really hit bullet sponges so damage spells in general become less relatively effective. you might want to look at other low level spell options. some good low-level effects you might try exploring: - slicken (repeating interrupt) - rolling flame (fire damage, interrupts, in closed areas you can bounce it for multiple hits and interrupts) - ryngrim's repulsing visage (excellent debuff but you have to be close range) - kalakoth's minor blights (a way to get ranged fire damage for long times... at level 20 it scales generously to legendary) - arduous delay of motion (the -33% action speed debuff is rather unique way to make enemies weaker; will stack with dexterity penalties) it really depends on how you set up your character. i rolled a single-class bellower (who uses up all their invocation whenever they use an invocation which means a lot fewer invocations in general) but still had plenty of invocations and chants that i always found a use for, even if it was a situational song i'd switch into for a minority of fights, but it was a lot of advance planning to make sure i wasn't picking up redundant or super niche effects that didn't fit in well. if for example you only pick up the damaging invocations, you might find yourself preferring one all the time. if you pick up like two damaging invocations and a few buffers, then you'll end up spreading them out. similar things with chants. if you pick up every single chant, you'll find half of them never get used. but if you focus on picking up some "core" chants, and then some more niche ones you switch into on occasion (the anti-beast, fire, anti-contentration, and various resistance chants are good candidates) you'll get a lot of mileage out of all them.

not as much. early on there's not much durational effects that are super important you want to extend (maybe when you get blade turning). i might consider trying to rest in wild mare, or eating swordfish (+1 pen to spells) to help spellcasting, or maybe things that help early survivability since you have less tricks up your sleeve (fresh fruit, yolk bowl, mariner's porridge)

i think both are pretty irrelevant for this build because it'll only be used as a backup (and early on when you don't have as many spells you won't have access to this weapon), though in general i think living pyre is better. the healing is soooo small. one cast of restore or -- if you have old siec chant in your party -- one offensive spell cast will do way more healing. i definitely recommend cloth or light because most of the time you're at range so you want minimal recovery versus more protection. weyc's robe could be a degenerate one - you're always going to be empowering every fight or so with salvation of time follow-up, and this will grant 20+ seconds of brilliant to everyone in your party (more with regenerated casts). if you want something more "fair", I would recommend High Harbinger's Robe, Pale Hide (with nocturnal upgrade), Swift Hunter's Garb, Miscreant's Leathers, Cabalist's Gambeson (with the +10% beneficial effect buff), or for more survivability, Fleshmender. DoC is pretty good, but the bonus to power pool is wasted on a partial caster.

that's an interesting idea. for a big shock damage bonus lash, it might be worth the extra micromanagement and no longer being a nature godlike to set that up with a helm and a friendly wizard. if not nature godlike, probably human would be a good choice, for the +7 acc/+15% damage bonus when bloodied or less.

Thought I'd try my hand at another one of these. I call this a 5.0 build because it incorporates a lot of metagaming-related stuff that as a community we only really figured out 5.0 or so. Basic build outline: stats Nature Godlike, 18 might/8 con/15 dex/10 perception/19 + 1 intellect (old vailia)/7 resolve. Hardcore min-maxers can tank con and resolve more to increase dex and perception. Classes: helwalker + magran Level-by-level guide (with free spells in brackets, optional picks with asterisk): Swift Strikes | Restore [Fan of Flames] Lesser Wounds* Interdiction* Dance with Death | Iconic Project [Spiritual Weapon] Long Stride Clarity of Agony* Swift Flurry | Watchful Presence [Ray of Fire] Two Weapon Style* Blade Turning* Duality of Mortality | Scion of Flame [Shining Beacon] Enduring Dance Spell Shaping The Long Pain* | Revive the Fallen [Fire Shield] Champion's Boon Rapid Casting Uncanny Luck | Salvation of Time [Pillar of Holy Fire] Tough Turning Wheel* Accurate Empower | Rain of Holy Fire [Torrent of Flame] Penetrating Empower Gear Weapon slot 1: Magran's Core | Weyc's Wand (soulbound to monk, not priest) Weapon slot 2: Chromoprismatic Staff Other items: Ring of Focused Flame, Sonorous Ring, Least Unstable Coil, Necklace of Power, Vithrack Slippers, Firethrower's Gloves, The Maker's Own Power Pet: Otto Starcat! Possible alternatives - Flame Naga or Nemnok or Ooblit. Misc In the alchemy lab in the top-left corner of the map, boost your might permanently. How the build plays For most of the game this is just a glass cannon nuker that uses Dance with Death's generous up to +15 accuracy, Helwalker's up to +10 might (passive stacking) and up to +10 intellect (active, not stacking), and Priest of Magran's nukes to destroy things. Swift strikes and Nature godlike gives you +1 passive PL, and you accumulate various things that make all your fire (and a few evocation-keyworded) abilities more powerful. Where this build really comes into play is late game, and is why you're not a wizard. Rain of Holy Fire, empowered, plus Weyc's Wand plus Least Unstable Coil = +3 PL (that you extend with Salvation of Time) and almost certainly every single tier 3 inspiration in the game. As far as I can tell, multiclassed wizards can't do this - they need Missile Salvo or Meteor Swarm to pull off the same Least Unstable Coil interaction (there may be another spell that might be able to trigger this interaction that I haven't tested). Priests get salvation of time that they can spam forever if needed thanks to Brilliant, and wizards are limited to a Wall of Draining that has been somewhat nerfed (though there are items you can use to make it consistent, like Jester's Cap). Between Magran's Core, Nature Godlike, Weyc's Wand (again, very important to not soul-bound it to a priest, despite priests getting a unique effect... it's not as good as the default effect), and possibly Otto Starcat and Stone of Power, you get +8 PL to your fire spells, up to +9 PL for Fan of Flames, Ray of Fire, and Torrent of Flame since they are evocation as well. That's an astounding +8 acc, +2 PEN, +40% damage (multiplicative!), +40% duration (multiplicative!). This is on top of any inherent PL scaling you already have, the +75% damage bonus from maxing out might at 35 (18 + 10 helwalker + 5 might inspiration + 1 maker's own power + 1 alchemy lab), +15 accuracy from dance with death, +10 accuracy from ring of focused flame, and a +100% duration bonus from having 30 intellect (20 base + 10 from duality of mortality). Not to mention that compared to a "normal" caster you have an additional +2 PEN on all your spells from either Champion's Boon or a Least Unstable Coil-triggered Energized inspiration. Against fire immune or fire absorbing enemies, you can fall back to be more of a conventional monk using Long Pain to attack safely from a distance and keeping your allies alive with heals. Iconic Projection is a decent heal that happens to also hurt enemies using frost damage, and Watchful Presence effectively gives everyone a death prevention shield with an automatic huge heal (all that PL scaling and might makes for a huge heal instead of death). All the bonus PL you get that is not fire-keyword-limited (from weyc's wand, nature godlike, and necklace of power) will supercharge your monk fists to do tons of damage. Because you have so much intellect, you can probably frequently use spellshaping to shrink your spell aoes for an additional +1 PL with minimal loss in coverage of enemies affected! Possible party members A chanter's old siec chanter will also work with spells cast, making the firedancer able to heal themselves for enormous amounts from spell casts. With shield cracks, a firedancer might be able to get even more damage out due to overpenetration. A paladin with shared flames can buff the firedancer with a +15% fire damage lash on their spells (which means multiplicative, which can also be stretched with salvation of time!). Complement with exalted focus for more damage, though be warned that only the 5% hit to crit will be useful since the +5 will be suppressed by your superior dance with death buff. Possible alternatives If someone discovers a wizard spell at tier 7 or lower that also triggers least unstable coil multiple times, a wizard (especially an evoker or blood mage) could be a viable replacement for the priest half. The only spell I haven't thought to try that might do this is Concelhaut's Crushing Doom. Druids can also do this with good aiming of Twin Stones, Venombloom, and I believe Returning Storm and Relentless Storm. Only problem is that in terms of pure fire damage output I find even a priest can do better than a druid, plus priests (and wizards) have an in-built way of stretching out the duration of Least Unstable Coil and the Weyc's Wand buff. But druids might have a better backup plan against fire immune or fire absorbing enemies compared to an all-in priest of magran. this build is optimized for RTwP, for turn-based mode you'd probalby want to drop dex in favor of perception. Ooblit might be more important so that you hit critical rounding breakpoints to have enough time to wreck as much as you can. edit: early on, when you have fewer spells, i recommend a) resting in the wild mare for +1 spell cast, or bathing in the bathhouse for a similar bonus and b) using quarterstaff, pike, or a ranged weapon so that your dance with death can accumulate you to high accuracy and might in relative safety.

I know this is not a good general solution, but do there exist localization mods for deadfire?

if you fully read my post, you would see that what i'm talking about are minor, capped rewards. Roleplaying games should encourage meaningful choices when roleplaying. Lacking proper reward loops isn't equity in choices, it actively makes certain choices punished because players have to put in more effort than other players for the same net reward; you are in effect punishing certain players for their preferences by a logic that is frequently obscured to them at the outset. Sometimes this lack of equity is meaningful within the narrative itself - like being good means turning down rewards so that "goodness is its own reward." Stuff like that. But I think typically the bigger risk is improper or insufficient reward loops. this is literally a line of argument i also make. (though here i reference far cry's use of generous rewards for being completely stealthy versus going in unseen to basically punish players who don't want to play a stealth game) i'm not actually sure what XP balance problem you're referencing? Again, I'm not talking about varying how much XP we get from quest rewards. That would be design suicide in my book, because then there obviously is a "correct" way to resolve each quest. My examples are the minor, capped "bestiary" rewards from kiling enemies, and the minor, capped "locks & traps" experience from picking locks and disarming traps, and--relevantly for this thread--the extremely minor incidental experience for passing a speech check in F:NV (in the 10s of experience, when quest completions can be on the order of thousands). in the long run these things don't matter at all for character advancement due to the sheer difference in magnitude, but in short bursts they are an acknowledgment that the player did something special, and in the minor instances where they make you level up a hair faster than someone else can feel very satisfying. edit: deadfire adds a lot more special one-off bestiary rewards for many bosses and boss-type enemies. i'm more dubious on that, but it's also still part of a reward loop.

ok, better example - benweth in deadfire. if you take the violent path you get some pretty rough (at least at the recommended level) fights and the loot is still pretty standard fare/minimal. out of all my runs, i did it twice. now i just always rig the piano to blow up.

it's not about impatience, it's the fact that if the player does something extra there should be some sort of reward, or else the game effectively disincentivizes the player from doing it. what is the point of clearing an entire level of enemies if you get nothing out of it? in some genres, the action itself is the reward, but in RPGs they tend to be stepping stones to something else - character development, narrative development, loot, etc. Given different choices, some choices clearly become suboptimal. For example, in PoE1, there are many ways to handle Raedric's fort, but the violent options are heavily disincentivized because of how brutally difficult they are and how minimal reward you get for identical outcomes to e.g. stealth, disguise, etc. with regards to speech skills, a lot of speech checks in deadfire don't do much. They add some extra lore, but there's only so much impactful reactivity. The same was true for Fallout: New Vegas as well, to a lesser degree. But even the speech skills that had no impact were still worth trying to beat because of that tiny drip of experience. and let's be real here - we're talking games. reward loops are a critical element of the game. i'm not the only one (from having talked to people about this) who felt that Fallout 3 lost a little bit of something once you hit level 20 and no longer got the fun little cash register noise every time you killed an enemy or did something. edit: there's obviously a balance here. i also don't like it when certain things are rewarded so above and beyond the "normal" that they basically become the new normal, like how hugely a fully stealthy infiltration can get rewarded in open-world action games like far cry.

*blush* sacred immolation in the paladin tree doesn't get a lot of love from many people, and it is a very finnicky ability, but for my current run i set pallegina up as a single-classed paladin and invested in that and sacred sacrifice and it has been a blast. the difference between level 12 and level 13 (when a single-class unlocks it) was game-changing for pallegina, went from slow tank, to glass cannon nuker. i give her ring of focused flame, voidward, and back her up with triumph of the crusaders and sometimes champion's boon. even without champion's boon sacred immolation has such huge inherent penetration that you can melt even relatively hardy foes, and in trash fights, the triumph of the crusaders (coupled with some lucky procs from virtuous triumph) is enough to keep pallegina at full health and do more than a couple casts of the immolation. paladins also have other aoe effects that might fit into your definition. i think there are also some builds around whirling strikes for ranger, and dpending on your definition of "aoe", rogues can fit in with many different approaches (spells via trickster, aoe abilities like pernicious cloud, deep pockets to hold lots of scrolls and grenades, etc) also if you're extremely patient, a monk with whispers of the wind is technically not "aoe" per se, but you'll still clear an entire battlefield pretty quickly.

yeah. there is definitely stuff gated behind ashen maw as well, but at tha tpoint i would be extremely surprised if mutiny was gated behind that.

crazy idea - try advancing the main quest a bit? a lot of people hav ecompalined about random events in nekataka not triggering, but it turned out some of them are gated behind main quest progress - i had a long time of no events, advanced the main quest, and then suddenly had a bunch. mutiny seems like an odd thing to be gated behind story, but you never know i got a mutiny once, but it was a while ago. unfortunately, due to regressions that popped up especially from 4.0->5.0 i would not be surprised if they broke mutiny as a mechanic and it's such an underexplored area no one noticed.

yeah, i missed je sawyer's reputation stream earlier so i just watched it now, and hearing him talk about the general approach to disco elysium got me excited about the possibilities, precisely for what you are talking about. i imagined a hypothetical world where you were trying to convince the bardattos and valeras to negotiate in deadfire, and you'd hover over the threshold indicator and see you getting like +1 because of diplomacy skill, -1 for resolving a quest badly, -1 because you're a goody two-shoes Benevolent and valeras hate that, +1 for keeping the duelists alive earlier, etc. i think an indirect benefit to a system like that is that designers and writers can focus their attention a lot more on specific mechanical checks and how things feed into that and really get the balancing right, versus a more abstracted system. so you get greater reactivity out of a few important impactful checks, rather than a diffuse, easy to max out system that sometimes seems a bit arbitrary or low-impact.

the problem is that the player-reward loop is pretty important. i remember in the early poe backer beta it was extremely annoying that you didn't get any XP at all from fighting monsters, which made everything feel like an utter waste of time (on top of most loot being uninteresting). the compromise approach of using bestiary to give you experience for a little bit was a good one, imo. there's a similar compromise with traps in deadfire - there's some "max" amount of xp you can get from traps and lockpicking in a given area and after a while you max out. so player who invest in these skills sufficiently are trained up a bit with rewards, but players who bypass it don't miss out on that much. in all the newer fallouts, the experience you get from passing speech checks is pretty minor, so it will never be a huge amount of xp, but rewards players who make the extra effort to do something that is by definition not normal (since you need to pass a skill check). however this works much better in new vegas than in save-scum fallout 3/4, and in new vegas reading a magazine and taking a drug just so you can get over a threshold makes getting that tiny drip of xp all the better and more appropriate since it seems like actual player effort went into it.

it seems to me that the diff between 16 and 18 is huge. with 16, body attunement/shield cracks (+ some other choices) with flanking means legendary weapons can do -25% or full damage with modal or a tier 2 inspiration (and stilettos can do full without either). at 18 you could easily still be stuck at -50% or even irredeemably -75% crush/shock will still be easier and may even allow for overpenetration in some cases, but right now it strikes me as incredibly dull and obliterating of 20 levels of gameplay choices because as is stands dorudugan effectively says "immunity to anything not crush, shock, or raw"

for future use, in turn-based mode dex (and armor) are much less important especially for non-casters. intellect is surprisingly useful for a monk as well (area of effect of torment's reach, duration of blade turning, duration of swift strikes) so intellect could use some if you plan on re-doing the stats. however, it's much harder to determine how good intellect is in turn-based mode due to hard rounding cutoffs - i remember reading something that 14 is a good all-purpose target to hit, but it can be really all over the place for turn-based mode. perception is also less useful in turn-based mode because the graze range is significantly larger - basically you almost never miss. you still benefit from hitting/critting more often though, though on lower difficulties on turn-based mode, the "balance between might and perception" shifts in favor of might. i don't think any of these are deal-breakers or reasons to re-roll, just providing that feedback.

res is not that important for RP / story, most of that is handled by your passive skills (bluff, history, etc.), and when it comes to stat checks, resolve is probably about as important as any other stat. the main RP part where resolve matters is just if you're interested in picking up a specific soulbound mace, which requires an intellect check to figure out how to pick up the mace, and then a resolve check to fight back its efforts to resist you picking it up. you don't have to dump res, but it's not very useful for non-melee-ers. and on veteran or potd, due to boosted enemy stats, it's pretty much an all-in deal to get much out of it (but it can be extremely good with heavy investment). if you're new to poe, the system is very forgiving. it's really hard to do a "bad" stat setup. there's more room to screw up in deadfire simply because multiclassing explodes the possible choices to make, and you can't respec stats or your level 1 abilities, so there's greater possibility that you get a suboptimal combination. i'm one of those people who know how to min-max but i still consciously choose not to (at least, not all the way) simply because it's not as "fun", and not dumping res has never prevented me from clearing the highest difficulty with challenges and with megabosses. as a rough outline - intellect and dex are king stats. might and perception are roughly equivalent and are better off being balanced (for offensive characters at least). con and resolve always suffer in games like these because high defense is not really rewarded in most situations. but again, it's hard to do a stat combination that won't work out. i think if you dump intellect and dex and invest them in resolve/con for a ranged caster you might have a harder time, but otherwise i would just go with what you're comfortable with. there are lots of micro optimizations if you wanna dive deeper into it that become class/role-specific, but for someone facing indecision i wouldn't worry about it. think of it more as something to worry about if you do a second or third run, after you have more experience under your belt. also, +1 to @Scrapulous's post. though one thing to add: i'm only really familiar with monks from dnd, 3e/pathfinder and if iirc in those games a monk is mostly an evasive glass-cannon (getting lots of AC when lightly encumbered, for example). the monk in poe2 is more about taking a lot of pain to power your abilities. depending on your preferred playstyle/narrative that might be quite a change, because in most situations being highly evasive is actually bad for you.

i raise this because some of the eotan chants affect party members, which would add to the party tooltip. but if you're just hiding buffs i's not a concern

i just finished watching several youtube videos doing a huge retrospective on fallout 3 DLC and on fallout: new vegas DLC and I was reminded of just how much better Obsidian's DLC was compared to Bethesda's DLC (oh god, I remember actively hating most of the fallout 3 DLC; fallout 4 isn't much better). I don't know what it is about obsidian's development culture versus others, but they definitely seem to do well with their DLCs.