Enoch

@Enoch Do you happen to have a save file where this is occurring that you could send to me at support@obsidian.net? We can use our own, but I also like to have the team test saves that definitely have the issue occurring. If needed, you can find instructions on where the saves are kept here. Thanks Enoch! Hmm... Now I can't seem to duplicate it. So it was either fixed with ...0025 or it's a conversation option that only crops up the first time you talk with Ydwin. And I'm not sure I have a hard save before that chat and reasonably close to when she becomes recruitable.

But... There are skillpoints to be bought!!! The cheapest morale-neutral provisions are Cuttlefish/Water. Cuttlefish is unique in being a +1 Morale food that you can buy in unlimited quantities (from the fish vendor in Queen's Berth) for only 7 cp each (that is, the same price as most 0-morale foods like Rice or Hagfish). Also, they look delicious.

Sawyer is the design lead for the whole company. So, even if he's not doing any hands-on work, he'll get a chance to provide some oversight and feedback.

The Polygon preview article quotes Charlie Staples as a (the?) Lead Designer. He was a Lead Area/Level Designer on New Vegas.

Nice.

Yeah, I'd greatly prefer there to be some way to resolve game situations other than pure running-and-gunning. Straightforward FPS gameplay is not really the strength of this studio, and certainly isn't my first choice of core gameplay mechanics as a player. Frenetic real-time gameplay is just... frenetic. Not what I want to be subjecting myself to in my limited leisure time. I'd look to the tactical pause and other-than-gun abilities of the pre-Andromeda Mass Effects, rather than the 3D-Fallouts' VATS, personally. Strong support for stealth approaches (as in Alpha Protocol or the Deus Ex games) also works.

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from.If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed) Can anyone in beta branch comment on this being generic PL or chanter-specific PL bonus? Having it be chanter-specific PL is dumb but frankly not outside the realm of possibility of something that Obsidian might do, misunderstanding that e.g. chants don't have any PL scaling. I don't have the save to look at again, but it definitely was stated as Chanter PL, and the Cantor merc I made didn't see her Transcendent Suffering improve. This was on the initial Beta build. There certainly does seem to be a tendency for them to assume that a PL boost makes everything better, without thinking about what precise things it improves and what it doesn't.

Belower can get bonus PL. This shifts him towards stuff that benefits most from this, mostly damage-dealing stuff.He gets -50% chants aoe (or radius?) penalty. So it's not chants. And if single-classed he would get trumped by troubadour, who can use invocations twice as often. So it looks like belower is quite inclined towards multi-classing with spell damage dealers, like fire priest and especially evoker. You throw an invocation, gain PL bonus and proceed to casting evocation stuff. It's like mini-empower. The ugly thing though is that: - you get +0.5 PL by phrase count consumed, rounded down. Using a 3-phrase invocation... is meh. You want to use your highest-even-cost stuff for the bonus. - the PL bonus doesn't stack with itself. So no Sasha's Singing Scimitar shenanigans. - all your phrases will be consumed when you cast an invocation. So belower requires a higher level of supervision. P.S. I think that PL bonus should be rounded up, to be more worthwhile.. The bonus PL is Chanter PL. I don't think it would effect Wiz or Priest spells. (It definitely doesn't affect Monk fists.)

Nope! It's not extra phrases that grants bonus to PL. It's the already stored phrases that grants the bonus. If you cast a PL 5 invocation (with 7 phrases stored) you get a 'based on 7 PL bonus' of some kind. question to chanter lover. is this really a good subclass addition? is this what most chanter player like this? I posted earlier in the thread that I don't see much reason to be a fan. Given that PL boosts don't do much for summoning or buffing invocations (only duration) and only help the debuff/disable invocations a little bit (duration and a small +ACC), this is mostly about the direct-damage invocations. (Damaging and Healing Phrases would also get a boost, but the duration is so short that this didn't seem like a signficant consideration.) And there is already a subclass built to excel at those. I can see the case where, if you're using the Singing Scimitar, you can open combat with a high-level empowered Invocation and immediately follow it with another high-level PL-boosted Invocation. (When I tested a 6-Phrase invoc, I got +3 Chanter PL for a short while.) Situationally, that can be a combat-ender. But the sacrifices are significant-- giving up both Chant AoE and the ability to chain lower-level invocations (many of which remain very useful throughout the game, like Hel Hyraf and Killers Froze) hurts. The more frequent Invocs of a Skald and the flexibility of a Troub or base-Chanter both seem far more valuable.

A few days late, and I sort of hate (read: actually love) to be that guy, but: *peek (Unless you're smuggling a new mountain into the game, of course.)

Has anybody noticed this happening in the 4.0 Beta? I haven't seen anything suspicious since I updated, but I've just been playing, rather than actively seeking to recreate the circumstances where I'd seen it in 3.1.

C'mon, Josh-- using a contraction is cheating.

On your first question, see this thread. A good Barbarian build is all about the passives. Thick Skinned, Bloodlust, One Stands Alone, Blood Thirst, etc., are great and what you want to be building around. So, reading through their descriptions, you get an idea of what the character is going to be best at doing-- attacking grouped enemies and getting kills that accelerate into more kills. The active abilities help this-- the Yells to soften the enemy (lowering their Deflection and PL), Wild Sprint and Leap to go around the enemy front-liners and get to the softer targets, Barbaric Blow as a finisher (it's a bit expensive to use a whole lot without the upgrade that makes it free if it kills). But, yeah, they can be tough to keep upright, especially early-on when you don't have a lot of tools in your bag (buffs, heals, equipment) to deal with their low inherent Deflection and Frenzy's further deflection malus. Ultimately, you probably want them frenzied all the time, moving fast, and hitting hard, but early on you might need to make some compromises for survivability, such as using Frenzy only situationally, or wearing heavier armor and/or a shield. Tactically, Barbarians are ideal Flankers (that is, try to hold back-- perhaps using the time to activate Frenzy and/or get a Yell in-- until the more defensive melee-types have engaged, then run the Barb around the outside to flank the enemy or engage their back line) but they can certainly be built sturdily enough to hold a line of battle, too, if your party setup needs that more. (Also, Barbarian Serafen is totally the right choice. Wild Mind is an infuriating subclass.)

On Bellowers: I was curious about the PL bonus. First, and most importantly, it's Chanter PL. So, no real synergy with other classes there. (I was curious about whether a Cantor would benefit from better Transcendent Suffering. No dice.) As to magnitude, with a 6-phrase invocation, you get +3 Chanter PL. The problem is that it's for a really short duration-- no tooltip breaking it down, but with a 16 INT character it was about 4 seconds. Given that every invocation has a recovery time of at least 2 secs, base, you'll need to land a Salvations of Time to make anything useful out of it, beyond that one Invoc. And, really, the invocations that are most PL-sensitive are the direct-damage ones like Eld Nary, which tend to have 3 or 4 sec. recoveries. Summons, IIRC, scale on character level, not Power Level, so I don't think they would be affected, apart from duration. And, really, does Chanter PL do anything useful outside of Invocations? I know it doesn't effect phrase linger, or the magnitude of most effects (e.g., Hearts Grew Bold is always +10/+10, at any PL). Maybe the direct healing and damage phrases would benefit? But only if they happen to tic within the brief window of the PL boost. As for the Chant AoE, the ability description says 50% smaller. The in-gameworld visual indicator certainly looks smaller than I'm used to seeing, but I don't know how to test that. Also, it lacks the visual indication of how much benefit is coming from INT/overseeing. Could be a bug-- I bet the -50% is calculated alongside INT/Overseeing and the net change is displayed. IMO, it'd be better if we could still see what change we were getting from INT/Overseeing. Anyhow, I can't say I see much to recommend this at the moment.

I don't know about a weapon, but there are some options that provide some healing when an enemy is killed. (E.g., as a pet's party-wide effect.)

Veteran is now Path of the Half-Damned! Ydwin's new conversation options are pretty extensive. Also a bit buggy-- an option that discusses how the party had met Rymrgand is available on a save where that hadn't happened yet (either in Flaune's quest or in BoW).

This is the most in-depth single source that I recall having seen.

Even if they don't rebalance, they might fix the persistent quest XP award bugs I've been seeing. (I wouldn't be averse to adding a "Completionist Mode" checkbox when starting a new game, which, when toggled, steps up the XP required for levels 6-20.) Edit: It seems I was confused into thinking that the post on the bottom of that page was the most recent one in the thread. Apologies for talking to a week-old echo. Need more caffiene.

The was not a good game (I have no experience with the tabletop version), but, thematically, it'd be a pretty sweet spot to put a modern RPG. Luminiferous Aether!!! (Also, I'm reminded for some reason of Sawyer tweeting this a few months back...)

I mean, yeah, I'm getting by OK-- I didn't build this character to be strictly optimal. Mostly, it took me embarrassingly long to figure out what the applicable mechanic here was, so I wanted to confirm it and see what discussions may have taken place about it. And it does burns me that, by deviating from the thematic vision I had for the character and picking Scions of Adon (or whatever) at level 11 (instead of something like Aefyllath or Charge), she can become far more effective. (Thematically, Rihi the Thunderer is a War Hammer War Caller. The idea of a little Orlan lady swinging a big hammer in each hand and shouting thunder and lightning seemed fun. (Bonus that both Last Word and Resounding Call theme well with yelling at stuff.) This is my pro-Old-Order tack at the main plot-- she has embraced the "Herald of Berath" thing wholeheartedly.)

Sure, I get that now, but I shouldn't have to trick the game into letting me access one of the benefits of leveling up in a class. Spending an ability on an expensive option you're not planning to use just to get something that it feels like you should be getting anyway is a drag. This wasn't a huge deal in Pillars 1, because characters were prompted to pick invocations on every even-numbered level, and most players probably tended to pick one of the "new" ones. A Troubadour is always going to have a 4-cost Invocation (the one picked at first level), and a Beckoner nearly always will (presumably one wouldn't be a Beckoner if one wasn't going to select at least one summoning Invocation). That starts them off in a not-terrible position, even if they go a few power levels before selecting a more expensive one. Tekehu, of course, gets certain Invocations for free at each PL, which bumps his Phrase cap up without any action by the player. Skalds, on the other hand, are the only subclass that gets a discounted rate on a subset of Invocations. If they follow the most logical course in making their leveling decisions, they're not going to get a big lump of Phrases to spend at the start of combat, and they'll often find themselves unable to benefit from their special Phrase-generation mechanic because they're topped out. I like the idea of tying this the Phrase cap to PL, but the hard part then becomes that subclasses have different costs. To make sure that each variety of Chanter isn't locked out of any of the Invocations they select, you'd have to start the cap at 4 at PL1, and increase it based on the maximum cost Invocation at each PL, plus 1. Effectively, that makes Skalds, base-class Chanters, and the Storm Speaker more powerful, relative to Troubs and Beckoners. Maybe that's warranted? Base Chanters could probably use the boost, but Tekehu might be too strong as he is. Skalds are probably relatively underpowered on PotD (given infrequency of crits), but I'm not sure about Relaxed/Classic/Veteran.

I'm currently playing a War Caller (Skald), and by the far the most annoying part of building this character is the cap on Chanter phrase accumulation. Specifically, Chanters can never accumulate more Phrases than the highest cost Invocation they have learned. This also limits the "free" phrases that Chanters get at the beginning of combat. I've been playing this character as a non-summoning Chanter, and, as incentivised by the Skald subclass, I've been avoiding investing in non-offensive Invocations. Now I've got a level 10 War Caller who starts combat with 2 Phrases (i.e., the cost for all her Invocations), and whose Phrase count never goes above 2. Which is unchanged from level 1. If I re-spec her level 10 PL4 Chanter ability into a non-offensive Invocation (even though I'd really like one of those great tier-4 Phrases), boom, she starts every fight with 5 Phrases. This is supremely irritating, and I can't figure out whether it's an intended effect or not. (That is, should I be reporting a bug?) I get that they might want to have an upward bound on the accumulation of Phrases, but, at the very least, this cap shouldn't be less than the number of "free" phrases that one would otherwise get at the start of combat. Deciding to relying on low-level invocations (discounted by the Skald subclass) shouldn't be gimping an important aspect of the growth of a character's class abilities. (If this has been discussed before, please refer me to that thread. My searching didn't find anything, but it's tough to guess the terms that folks would use for this.)

Could go with Serafen as a pure Barbarian. Tekehu is fun to have around, but, with that cast, you probably want more front-line beef. (Unless you Battlemage Aloth or build Xoti to be particularly tanky.) That said, Pallegina will work OK-- she'll squabble with the preachy types and you'll have a tough time getting both of them to like you, but it never comes to blows. Also be aware that some of the Companions who care deeply about particular factions may not go along if you choose to ally with a different one. If you're open to using the "Sidekicks" (companions with less narrative content-- no personal quest or intra-party approval mechanic), Rekke is a beast of a front-liner in any of his class options (FIG, FIG/BAR, FIG/MON). Konstantin makes an okay BAR or BAR/CHA. Mirke can be a pure Monk, and pure Monks are great.

They only apply on the first hit calculated. After the first roll check (irregardless of whether or not the hit lands), the poison on the weapon is gone and you have to reapply it. If you could mass apply poison I think it'd be broken. Stone Joint does something like 250 Raw damage along with -35% Action Speed and Stride on a normal hit at Alchemy 20. If you could apply that to a group using a hand mortar or WotEP that would be insane value. Agreed. I figured it would be a well-known exploit if it worked, so I never really tested it out.

Related thing I've wondered about but haven't tested: Do poisons apply AoE when used with AoE-base-attack weapons or abilities?