Enoch

Why? The sub-classes of wizards are bad. You lose access to 2 schools for 2 power levels. If it were +10 PL, i would say ok, but +2 is not enough. That needs a complete rework. +10 PL is way too obscene. The subclasses aren't really that bad. They are more niche. If all you do is focus in on your specialized school, you are strictly better than a normal wizard in every way possible. Try rolling an evoker, transmute, or illusionist. Conjurers and enchanters need some help because PL scaling is really bad for buffs and summons. I haven't tried them personally, but I would think that Illusionists suffer more than Conjurers. The vast majority of illusions just get duration and (for the debuffs) tiny ACC boosts from a higher PL. Conjurers at least have some staple spells that benefit from the PL scaling on Damage and Penetration (NecLance, NoxBurst, the Walls, etc.). Are there even Illusions that do direct damage besides Wall of Many Colors? (That said, the non-spell specialization benefit and excluded schools probably both favor Illusionists.)

SawyrTumblr on the new subclasses:

Wait, does Supes represent you or me here? ('Cause I think I get ...)

Anyhow, given the Waelyworld feel of the hints and screenshots, it looks like I'm dusting off my favorite Pillars 1 import save again. My first stab at the Deadfire was as a Wael Contemplative, but I think I'll go single-classed this time. That has me thinking of ways to refine my roleplaying as a faithful Waelite. The one big quest that gave me agita as a Wael player was Mapping the Deadfire-- there really should've been a way to answer dishonestly there. (The apt comparisons are the two quests you do for Prince Aruihi, both of which allow you to report back with lies and satisfy the quest-giver.) I settled on a solution of doing the quest and murdering the mapmaker immediately thereafter, but the more faithful Waelite approach is probably to not do it at all, which goes against all my completionist-RPG-player instincts. The party will be a PC Priest of Wael, Rekke (himself one of the biggest mysteries in the Deadfire) as a Brute, Xoti as a pure Monk (in "evil" mode because mystical visions are to be sought after and embraced), Aloth in Leaden Key Grandmaster mode (I guess pure Wiz? Although Spellblades are fun), and one rotating slot (maybe settling on Celebrant or Zealot Vatnir? Not sure who else is most Wael-appropriate). The endgame, of course, is to steal the Floating Hangman and go it alone, because I'm not here to bring unearned enlightenment to any of these other fools.

This makes sense, I've seen people complain that they can't be a shark druid or whatever. There's companion subclasses for priest, monk, cipher, druid, chanter, paladin... I think that's all of them? I think at least for Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Barbarian we will get something new. For the others, I'd love to see something new too, but I imagine they will use the companion's subclasses. Lore-wise, Wild Mind and maybe Reaping Moon would be not-inappropriate for a Watcher. Watershaper, Storm Speaker certainly not. Not sure about the lore with Gunhawk. (Not considering the Priest and Paladin, as we know what we're getting there.)

I'm most interested in where they'll go with the new Wizard subclass. No room for new school specializations, so we're likely going to see something rather different. Edit: no Wild Mages plz!

They could put one of the megabosses inside the dungeon. Megabosses are free-for-everyone DLC, so they wouldn't put them in a paid-DLC location.

my corpse-eater cares more about being fast. he's also actually a shaman (corpse-eater + priest of skaen), so I have extra heals, enemy accuracy debuffs, and I can Escape to eat corpses for more healing or even just for the temporary +50 deflection boost. Ironically, when I had serafen in my party (who was wearing heavier armor), serafen had much harder time staying alive. rekke is doing fine though (upgraded heavy armor + thick-skinned + armored grace + litany for the body = 25% under pen for many enemies but still fast) Hey now, Wild Mind may be a totally inadequate sidegrade to an inadequate core class, but you need a lot of room on the bottom to distinguish it from the truly bad (Brotherhood of the Five Suns) and figurative tire fires (Sister of the Reaping Moon). ...yeah they really need to do a companion unique subclass balance pass at some point. however much off the other special subclasses might be (and I don't mind Sister of the Reaping Moon at all), serafen's is the only one that has actively caused harm to me. I think the last straw for this paticular run was using Mind Blades and triggering a Wild Mind that made all enemies hit with it invisible. "Welp, time to go get Rekke." Anytime in the future I use serafen it'll be as a pure barb. i haven't been playing a barbarian yet in deadfire. still cant decide which is the other better multi-class option. i don't fancy using serafen for the things you mentioned. also the wild mind. but without him having the cipher subclass making it a little immersion breaking as the whole story and conversation was scripted as a cipher. maybe can use unity console and make him a regular cipher instead. I've been waiting for someone to make a mod that just reduces the Wild Mind proc rate to 0. I'm a modding ignoramus, but, just based on Josh's statements about lots of the game data being stored in plain text formats, it seems to me like that'd be the simplest way to go about it.

We somehow missed this one last week.

That is some really nice work.

Was the CW countered by a Water- or Frost- keyworded effect?

In defense of Skaen, he might just be biding his time, living under the oppressors thumb, waiting for the right moment to stab Woedica in the back. Edit: On second though, that seems strange to me. Skaen is about the oppressed. If he kills Woedica, then he loses his status as opressed. So he clearly cannot rebel against Woedica. She - in the immortal words - complete him. Skaen is that which sacrifices itself to free others from oppression. Ugly, bloody, spiteful, and brutal, but constantly fighting in the name of a freedom that he knows he can never taste. He's Grimdark Moses, always dying once the promised land is in sight. (Minus the lawgiving stuff.)

Bad form to write a thread title as a declaration (or exclamation!) when it's really a request.

I strongly suspect that the answer is no, but I haven't checked. Most sources of healing stack just fine. Generally, healing isn't a buff; it's a direct effect on HP. As such, 2 sources of +3 HP every 3 seconds would be just like getting 2 Restores cast on you. The exception is buffs that have healing as a secondary effect. Most notably, 2 sources of the "Robust" inspiration do not stack. I think Exalted Endurance is like "Robust" in this-- a buff that includes healing as one of its component effects. A character within the range of an EE Paladin gets the little EE symbol on their list of statuses, and gets the benefit of all of its effects, including healing. For the healing to stack, the aura would have to apply the AR and HoT effects separately, applying the AR as a status to everyone within the aura, and "pulsing" the healing out more like Consecrated Ground does. I could be wrong, but I don't recall it functioning this way. (Related question: Does the EE healing effect key on the Paladin's MIG, or the individual character's?)

Nalpazca Monk Wael defensive spells to make you hard to hit; Dance of Death + Drugs to generate Wounds instead. And it's a super-appropriate roleplaying decision for a Priest of the god of perception and dreams to be a little too into psychedelics. You're probably a little less effective overall than a pure Monk (lower PL on abilities and fist damage; loss of top-tier abilities), but you have the benefit of helping everyone else in the party by being able to Restore or Suppress in a pinch, and to lay down a Devotions (or whatever) in the early phase of combat while the enemy approaches. Lets you devote more of the rest of the group to direct offense/control and less to support.

Depends on the opportunity cost. It's never worthless, but at some point the extra effort to get more becomes counter-productive. For example, a Fighter-Berzerker in Frenzy (30%), with Disciplined Strikes active (25%), attacking a paralyzed enemy (25%), using 1-handed style with the appropriate ability (20%), wearing Fair Favor with an appropriate weapon (10%), and as a Hearth Orlan attacking a foe also targeted by an ally (10%) gets an aggregate 74.5% chance of converting any given hit to a crit. You could equip the Bone Setter's Torc for another nominally-5% chance at H2C, but that would only upgrade your aggregate chance to 75.8%. Even for a crit-driven character, you probably have better stuff you could be putting in your neck slot. Also, considering this, note that, at best (i.e., If ACC-DEF is in the 0-49 range before adding the d100 RNG), only 49% or 50% of your attack rolls will Hit on the first pass, allowing H2C chances to proc. (Tangential question: does an attack roll result of exactly 50 graze or hit? The in-game journal is ambiguous.) So your aggregate H2C chance (again, at best) translates to roughly half that percentage of your total attacks turning into crits.

The Arbalest modal is nice. I like to make that the alternate weapon for a primarily-melee character, and use it as a combat initiator.

As I understand this, each source of conversion is processed one-by-one. It checks one, if converted, you're done, and if not, it checks the next. So, if you have 3 sources of h2c, at 25%, 15%, and 10% (I'm inventing numbers to illustrate because I don't remember precisely what chance the abilities you mention give you), the chance of a non-conversion is .75 * .85 * .9 = .574. Subtract that from 1 and convert to a percentage to get your total h2c chance: 42.6%

Why a Crusader? Paladin doesn't seem like it adds much here, aside from the ACC boost of Sworn Enemy. I would think that Fighter-Berserker would be the leading way to stack hit-to-crit, although I could be missing something. (Also, be aware of the diminishing returns that successive sources of x-to-y conversion get you.)

Here to spam you all with more Sun Ra. This particular track is the answer to the question "What does an experimental jazz icon do when he first gets access to one of the first commercial synths that came with cheesy pre-programmed beats?"

A Freelancer-type game has long been what I've deeply wanted Bioware to do with the Mass Effect universe. So, yes, this.

Yeah, Loading a save (possibly limited to a quicksave?) on a map where you have just earned Quest XP is duplicating. Happened to me again in Clario's estate, turning in Dig Site results. I got a phone call during the conversation with him, rushed through it and quicksaved. When I loaded that quicksave, the XP award showed up in the gamelog box. For comparison, I reloaded the autosave on entering the estate and did the conversation again. Character XP totals were ~1200 lower, each. (4 chars; quest XP awards of 460, 460, & 4216. The math works out-- they were applied a second time on loading the save.) Edit: And that second 460 itself may have been a duplicate. Just for giggles, I tried a 3rd time, starting from a hard save outside of town. Only got the 460 & 4216. Could be broader wackiness going on with quest XP in the game right now.

On hit-to-crit: First, the game does the normal d100 attack resolution. That gives an initial miss-graze-hit-crit result. Then, each source of upward or downward conversion is run, one after the other. That leads to diminishing returns-- e.g., one 30% and two 10%s adds to 43%, not 50%. On Berserker: Good only if you have a rock-solid source of Confusion mitigation. The constant passive chanting of phrases makes it tough to just endure confusion until you can get Priest help or Modwyr fully upgraded.

Dirty Fighting is a pretty small boost. The more significant sources of Hit-to-Crit are the Intuitive inspiration (25%; available from Fighter Disciplined Strikes and nowhere else reliable) and the enemy being Paralyzed (also 25%, IIRC). (In hindsight, I should've taken the Will/Fort buff instead of Soft Winds at level 1 and Soft Winds at level 2 instead of The Thunder Rolled (which I don't use a whole lot). I'd ideally respec out of Soft Winds once the PL4 Phrases are on line, but you can't get out of Level 1 choices.)

I'm early in my Skaldy War Caller playthrough, but I'll let you know. To me, the draw was mostly the -1 phrase cost to Offensive Invocations. I wasn't planning on doing any summoning with this character (largely a RP decision), and the Non-Offensive Non-Summons invocations underwhelm me, generally. I know that Troubs in Brisk Recitation mode can probably out-invoke a Skald who isn't hitting crits, but they have to give up Linger to get that. I didn't want to do that-- the overlap in phrases from a decent-INT Chanter is a useful tool, and I didn't want to have to cripple Phrase acquisition to get it. I view the Phrase-on-crit as a nice boost when it happens, but I'm not counting on it happening a whole lot. Through Maje Island, Thrice Was She Wronged likely accounts for the majority of damage done by the whole party. (The fact that it gets 3 attack rolls per target really helps generate some consistency when I'm a little underwater on the ACC-Defense math.) And, needless to say, with the limited tools that the starter island gives you, and with PotD-boosted enemy defenses, I'm not generating much in the way of crits. The build so far is Devoted-Skald. 12M-10C-12D-18P-16I-10R Hearth Orlan Weapon: War Hammer. For crit-maximizing, a faster weapon would do better. Clubs or Flails would be neat, so that the modal can soften up enemies for your Invocations, although Crush-immunity then becomes a problem. I went with Hammers because dual damage types are good, because the uniques appeal to me (neat on-crit effects available for all three), because an Orlan gal swinging 2 warhammers looks awesome, and because it just pairs well with somebody who yells to make thunder and lightning. What I gots: 1: Disciplined Barrage; Thrice was She Wronged; Soft Winds of Death 2: The Thunder Rolled 3: Hel Hyraf 4: Fighter Stances; Sound of His Voice 5: Two Weapon Style (Not actually using this yet. The ACC bonus of 1-handing will carry me until I can get some better ACC boosting equipment, like Last Word.) Planned: 6: [Not sure yet. White Wurms? I'll eventually want Thick Grew Their Tongues, but I might re-spec back into that.] 7: Disciplined Strikes; Ancient Memory 8: Penetrating Strike 9: [Either The Shield Cracks or Her Revenge Swept] 10: Vigorous Defense; [whichever of the PL4 Phrases seems most immediately useful]