Enoch

Bellowers are a good deal more specialized than a base-class Chanter or Troubadour. Their whole thing is using fewer Invocations (each one dumps their whole phrase count), but with significant PL bonuses. That pushes them to the damaging invocations, as added PL to a summon or a buff is kind of a waste. (It just gets you more duration.) Plus, they have reduced Chant AoE, limiting the usefulness of the debuffing/damaging chants. Personally, I think it's a lousy subclass, largely for reasons that @QuiteGoneJin posted-- the one trick with So Singt Biting Winds or Thrice Was She Wronged is a neat one, but it's the only one they do well. If I'm building a Chanter with a focus on damaging invocations, I'd rather build a Skald, whose advantages do more to help with debuffing invocations and who doesn't have a weaker Chant. Anyhow, Beast of Winter is going to be challenge. Singt does Freeze damage, which, as you might guess, isn't the best tool to use against the kind of enemies you'll find on an iceberg. The one damaging invocation that QGJ didn't mention trying (and that should be available to a level 14 Chanter) is Boil Their Flesh from Skin to Bone. I haven't really experimented with that one much, but BoW would be a good place to try it. You need the damage-type diversity. Alternately, play against type and be a (somewhat less than optimal) summoner. Use Ancient Instruments, and chant Many Lives Pass By-- chant AoE doesn't matter when you're using your passive chant to call a skeleton buddy, instead of a buff/debuff.

Citzal's Spirit Lance. Clear Out. Done. Seriously, though, it's a pretty intuitive build. Fighter-side needs Disciplined Barrage & Strikes, Knockdown/Mule Kick, Two-handed style, Fighter Stances (Cleaving), Vigorous & Refreshing Defense, Armored Grace, and Clear Out. Charge can also be quite handy. For Wizard abilities, look for Grimoires with the gishy spells, then supplement as-needed. Lots of folks like Katrenn's or Llengrath's Martial Masteries (IIRC, they're identical), as they have a critical mass of the good melee-use spells and are available early. The buffs I'd suggest casting at the start of every fight are Infuse with Vital Essense, Mirrored Images, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, one of Spirit Shield or Ironskin, then Citzal's Spirit Lance and go to town. Situationally, slot in an Arcane Reflection and/or Flame Shield before the Lance if the fight looks like one where those would help. (No need for Eldritch Aim, as you get a PER inspiration from the Fighter side, and I've never felt that Merciless Gaze was all that worthwhile.) Llengrath's Displaced Image is nice to have, too-- particularly in situations where you expect REF-targeting attacks-- but it's not necessary. (The DEF bonus will be suppressed by Mirrored Image, but MI does degrade as you take hits, and the hit-to-graze and REF bonuses are useful.) Before you get the Spirit Lance, Concelhaut's Staff can be OK. Beyond buffs, you might want to cast an occasional Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage for some close-range CC. Pull of Eora can cluster the enemies together for your AoE Lance attacks. An Essential or Substantial Phantom is really nice when cast after you've summoned your weapon of choice. (Phantoms come with a copy of your weapons/armor, including summoned items, and the copied items always last as long as the Phantom does.) It's also nice to have a backup Grimoire or two with more ranged nukes and/or debuffs. (Or just Kalakoth's Minor Blights!) Good to have the flexibility to switch to a more traditional wizard role, when tactically appropriate. Also, spending an occasional ability point on a general-use spell that you want to have available without switching books can be a good idea-- e.g., Thrust of TV for the ranged interrupt; Arcane Dampener for enemy buff-suppression.

IIRC, Ring of the Marksman specifies that its bonuses apply to ranged *weapon* attacks, while the Tricorn just says ranged attacks.

@thelee has the details on Galawain's Challenge in his FAQ.

Low RES can be worked around. Average-ish PER and DEX would be bigger concerns to me. They're just as important (often more important) contributors to a melee damager's effectiveness as MIG is. Also note that super-high MIG will boost the self-damage you take from Berserker Frenzy. It's all viable, particularly on sub-PotD difficulty levels, but my preference would be to prioritize PER and DEX a bit more and MIG and CON a bit less. As is, this build will be fantastic for max-level Barbaric Retaliation shenanagens, but might struggle a bit getting there. Barbaric Retaliation is a tier-IX ability that launches an instant, no-recovery full attack whenever the character takes a crit in melee. Pairs well with low deflection, high MIG & CON, and an armor rating as high as you can possibly stack it. But you can't take that ability until level 19.

1) You'll get class-exclusive dialogue options for each class. They're usually fairly minor, though. Mostly for flavor. 2) For a first-timer, I'd argue against any of the Wizard subclasses that lock you out of schools. Evoker is OK if you want to be a pure nuker, but otherwise, best to avoid limiting yourself before you really understand what you're giving up. 3) Warlocks are nukers! Frenzy's boosts to action speed, MIG, and (for Berzerkers) PEN apply to offensive spells. Also, kills with spells trigger the various "on kill" barbarian passives. You can do other stuff with them, too, but don't ignore those synergies. Alternately, single-classed Barb is really really good. Heart of Fury is a tier VIII ability, which multiclasses can't access.

If being able to approach fights in varied ways is a high priority, those may not be the best subclass choices. Evoker isn't a great pairing for a melee multiclass, as you lose all the lovely summoned weapons in Conjuration, which is really half the point of a Wizard multiclass. (Also the two Phantoms, which are cool.) Devoted has similar issues with the weapon summons. Evoker-Assassin, in particular, is a specialized character-- a top-shelf nuker. Cast an AoE damage spell from stealth (every affected target gets the PEN, ACC, and Crit-damage boost from Assassinate), then disappear again and repeat. You could swap grimoires, buff up, and get into melee afterwards, but it'd be working against the subclasses' design to a certain extent. So I'd suggest a base-class Wizard or Blood Mage. And my preference would be for Spellblade over Battlemage. A Battlemage really leans toward tankiness, while a Spellblade has more of that "just enough survivability" paired with mobility that it seems like you're interested in. And using K's Minor Blights or C's Spirit Lance to apply Crippling/Blinding/Toxic Strike over an AoE really is great fun. Personally, I'd pick a base class or Streetfighter over an Assassin, but I've never been keen on the Rogue's invisibility stuff-- my Rogues all tend to skip those and just take the attack abilities and passives. Consider also a single-classed Trickster. That gets you the melee defense buffs, along with some nice debuffs and a high-level nuke. If you're sold on double-swording it and not interested in weapon summoning, this is probably a better way to go than a multiclass.

Err... really? Using the dev console? It may not be explicitly expressed, but it would shock me if this was the case.

Zahua is incorporated as a subclass. Hiravias is referred to indirectly by Aloth, in conversation with Serafen. Something like "You're not the first ill-mannered Orlan to suggest [sexystuff involving Iselmyr]."

The Wisps are fun because they have a spammable interrupt. It's a slow action and a long recovery, but they teleport to the enemy and knock them down. (IIRC, it's a roll v. REF.) A good choice for slow-acting enemies where an interrupt can go a long way. (Just the other night I was using them to good effect on the Scourges and Soul Collectors in BoW.) In my experience, the Ogres struggle with penetrating enemy armor on PotD. Nice for some beefy flank-holders, but I was underwhelmed by their damage output.

The trick with RES is to know that high Deflection has increasing returns. Which is another way of saying that there are decreasing disadvantages to lowering it. If you're not building around absolutely maximized Deflection, you lose less by going from 10 down to 3 than you do with other stats. So some folks dump it on anything that isn't a pure tank. You can get mitigate defensive weaknesses via tactics, buffs, crowd control, etc., to get your defenses back to adequate levels. Dumping DEX is mostly a thing folks do in Turn-based mode, because poor initiative and stride can be worked around. In Real Time, action speed is pretty important to everyone, apart from a few very niche builds. Anyhow, it depends on what you want to be doing with this character. If you know what you're doing, averageish CON and low RES can get you by, even as a front-liner. MIG and DEX both help out the stuff you do in combat in slightly different ways. (DEX is somewhat better for auto-attack DPS and is nice for getting buffs up quickly; MIG does more for limited burst abilities (incl. healing) and in instances where you can skip recovery.) Balancing between the 2 of them is perfectly appropriate if you don't have strong vision that pushes one way or another.

I guess the question here is ways to get lots of engagement slots without using Defender/Guardian Stance? Barb, Rogue, and Fighter each have abilities that add +1 each (although the Fighter one adds only that and really isn't worth it). Then there's equipment. Dual wield Last Word and Kapana Taga (with appropriate enchantments) and wear the Reckless Brigandine with the Blackened Plate Helm, which stacks up 4 more. (Plus other bonuses for lots of "engagees".) If you need more than that, or if that gear isn't your style, you can get 3 more either by getting a Priest to cast Champion's Boon on you, or by being be a Brute and using Barbaric Shout. (I don't think these would stack with one another, but I confess that I haven't checked whether +Engagement abilities follow the normal stacking rules.) There's also a Chanter phrase and some resting options that give +1. But, really, how often are you going to be in a situation where space allows you to get more than 4 enemies engaged? A fairly typical Brute build, with Barbaric Shout, Spirit Tornado, all the usual passives, and maybe some of the above-mentioned equipment makes for a quite lovely front-line character. But Mob Stance topping out (as a practical matter) at a 20% or maybe 25% boost to recovery time probably puts it in the "nice perk" category, rather than the "center a whole character concept around this" category occupied by speed buffs like the Streetfighter's.

Sun and Moon is the typical choice for FoD spammers looking to boost Fire-keyworded power level, no? Just take a nap when the sun goes down. (Per your link, IIRC, Last Word's on-crit effect had its duration substantially nerfed at one point; possibly since that was posted.)

Attached image from here. (It's been a loooong time, but my recollection is that she's overrating it.)

It occurred to me that I do really enjoy one Deadfire improvement that I don't think has made this thread yet: The interrupt system. Pillars 1's interrupt/concentration system was very murky, RNG-driven, and unreliable. Now it's a very clear, useful, and fun part of gameplay.

I'd call it BG2-like not in the way of the illithids or Kangaxx or the Demogorgon or other fights that you have no chance at without supreme metaknowledge, but in the way of Draconis. That was the dragon fight about 2/3rds of the way through ToB where the baddie (who was named after a BIS forum regular) tended to cast Improved Invisibility and Heal once you got its health past a certain point. Which was... good? I mean, ToB was all kinds of epic-level cheese nonsense. At the point when the player can summon literal demigods to fight their fights for them, it counts as a nice change-up to see the enemy AI pull a trick that the player probably learned to do 10 levels ago.

Something I've wondered but never tested: is this exploitable? Reading the combat log, it appears that the invocation doesn't pause so much as it stops when the invocation action starts, and starts over when the invocation is cast. If you don't care about accruing phrases, is that a way to cycle Phrases faster than the typical 6-second period? Can I rack up Many Lives Pass By skellies or cause more frequent attack rolls with Thick Grew Their Tongues, Long Night's Drink, etc.?

You know, I've always thought that Sunbeam was somewhat underrated, particularly due to its rather rare range of 15M, making it a useful combat-initiator. But I'd never thought of utilizing that range for stealth purposes, with Scrolls of Sunbeam serving as Sparkcrackers that you can throw much further. So thanks for cluing me into a new trick!

For a base-class Chanter (or a Storm Speaker), all invocations' cost is consistent with that invocation's base level (i.e., not factoring upgrades in) divided by 2 (round up) plus 2. Any difference between abilities on the same tier is attributable either to a subclass (such as a Skald's -1 for Offensive and +1 for Non-Offensive) or to one of the abilities being an upgrade, rather than the base ability. So, if you look at the tier III abilities on a base-class Chanter's action bar, you might see The Shield Cracks costing 3 and Reny Daret's Ghost Spake costing 4, but that's because The Shield Cracks is an upgrade of Hel-Hyraf on tier I, where Ghost Spake is a base-tier-III ability. (IIRC, at release, upgrades caused the phrase cost to increase to match that of others on that tier. They changed that in a patch after folks complained that the cost increase made some upgrades a net negative on the effectiveness of the ability.)

Weirdly, it feels like forever since I've played with Eder in the party past the opening stages. The two saves I've been working on lately have been a pro-Vailian Mindstalker who runs with Pallegina (Herald), Serafen (Barb), Vatnir (Priest) and [rotating], and my usual Priest of Wael who uses Rekke (Brute), Xoti (Monk), Aloth (Spellblade), and mostly Ydwin (Mindstalker). I do agree with Wormerine in that a Priest tends to be what I miss most when I lack one.

Multiple sources of fast interrupts. (E.g., Thrust of TV; Rogue using fast weapons; Concussive Shot; the Barbarian Shout upgrade with the knockdown.) The Club and Morningstar modal abilities.

Huh? Invocation cost is still based on their power level. Before modification by subclasses, tier I-II Invocations cost 3 Phrases, III-IV cost 4, V-VI cost 5, and so forth. The only wrinkle is that upgrades to Invocations that you already have still have their Phrase cost based on their original level.

More from the SawyrTumblr.

For what it's worth, Lightning Strikes also has a bit more flexibility, in that it applies to all attacks, where Swift Flurry is melee-only. It's the choice if your Monk is going to dabble in Scepters or Mortars or whatever, in addition to being all punchy.

Pretty sure you will. Haven't checked the Devoted penalty, but summoned weapons do generally work with weapon modals, so I assume that other proficiency-checking mechanics apply. The one I'm not sure about is Kalakoth's Minor Blights-- is it even possible to be proficient in them? (Also, the Black Bow is too high a level for a multiclass to reach, absent mods.)