Iguana-on-a-stick

wrong. they even added story modes to IWD and BG, specifically for people who want to play for the story and visuals. "They," however, is Beandog, not the original designers at Bioware and Black Isle. It's only the Enhanced Editions (and even then only in Icewind Dale I believe) that a story mode was added. Atheosis is quite right that the games were not designed to for casual players, and that the Infinity games were quite unforgiving. But times change, and the enhanced editions have added more options to the later releases. Never a bad thing.

Actually, you can get combat to start without taking an action first. You just need to walk closer to the enemy. Which, admittedly, is far from ideal either since then the enemy will be all over your chanter more quickly. But it's possible.

It works for me. Very powerful ability. That's just the charm-dominate ones, though. Many of the cipher's other abilities are normal speed, or even very fast. Mental Binding, Mind Lance, Amplified wave, among others, are -very- fast to cast. And have much longer ranges. Cipher's are widely considered to be one of the most powerful classes, and my experience definitely backs this up.

You're welcome. Remember that base damage is actually a random range. So a weapon might do 10-15 base damage... which means that 2 attacks that both hit might still do a different amount of damage.

Damage = Base damage * might modifier - damage resistance. This is then halved for a graze and boosted by 50% for a critical hit. (Barring talents/items modifying this) EDIT: Oh, the halving/boosting of damage because of a hit roll actually occurs -before- damage reduction is applied. So if you graze against a tough foe, you'll do very little. On the other hand, even if the enemy damage resistance is super-high, 20% always goes through. There are also other talents, items and abilities that modify damage. You can find the damage range in the description of your weapon or spell, though situational modifiers aren't listed. (Like a weapon dealing 115% damage against spirits) But you should be able to see whether those apply by hovering over the damage number in the combat log. You can find out enemy damage resistance by looking in your bestiary or hovering over the enemy with the mouse... if you have enough knowledge of this enemy type. Often you'll have to guess or experiment. It's more complicated if your weapon does multiple types of damage, like the elemental lash enchantments. There was a thread a while back on how this interacted with enemy damage resistance, but don't actually recall what conclusions, if any, came from it.

Also, these spells are very good to open up the fight. If you have detected the enemy, you can easily move your casters to the front and launch a mind-lance and a lightning bolt or two. Then, as the enemy starts to charge, simply move your casters back and your tanks to the front. Best of both worlds. Once battle is joined and you are standing toe-to-toe with the enemy, these spells -are- situational, but the damage they inflict does make up for it. Just compare the damage a fireball does to the damage a lightning bolt inflicts.

Uhm... you can already open combat with a fireball. Or two. Or three. Or set three Slicken spells and 2 priest trap spells and -then- open up with a fireball. Only a few spells cannot be cast before combat is initiated, typically ones that charm or dominate enemies. Annoying, sometimes, but I generally see why they did this balance-wise.

Well, there are always cheats. They disable steam achievements, but if you don't care about those (and I certainly don't) that shouldn't be a problem. Check out gamefaqs or the wiki or something and there'll be instructions on how to boost your character's stats and such. If you give everybody a nice boost to CON the game ought to be more forgiving without being god-mode like. Also, a lot of the most difficult fights are optional. So if the thing you're stuck on isn't a main plot battle, you can always just ignore it and still see most of the story. And if it is in the main plot, you can always leave it for later and come back when you have more levels. That won't help if you're at the level cap, but for most of the game it's a perfectly viable solution.

I quite like this proposal. Sounds like fun. The only game I can think of that had anything remotely like this was Jagged Alliance. There, your characters had to rest occasionally, but not everybody got tired at the same rate depending on how fit they were, and you could do a bunch of different things in downtime: treat wounded characters, train up militia, repair gear, operate installations like hospitals or radio towers, and of course practice their skills. Wounded characters needed time and medical attention to recover. It was quite fun and really added to the immersion. But of course, that was a tactical squad-management game rather than a traditional RPG. It was easier to fit such a system in, because there was an active enemy presence and squandering too much time training and whatnot would lead to counterattacks and the enemy making progress. I don't think such a system could be shoehorned in an RPG and work well. But something like the OP describes could work if the game was designed around it. It would make dungeon design tricky, though.

(Nevermind. Ineth already mentioned this. Delete please.)

You do get loading times in BG when entering buildings. They're very quick, however, and on modern PCs you probably just don't notice them. But I definitely noticed them back when the game was new. The clever thing with BG is that it doesn't autosave when entering normal buildings, and doesn't require your party to stay together either. So presumably it does what Hogfather suggested earlier, and allow for loading all indoors and outdoors areas on a single map simultaneously. (or near enough. There's still some lag when switching between party members in different areas.) I'm not sure why PoE doesn't do this either. Your suggestion sounds good to me, but I'm afraid it's too late now to implement.

I think you mean Priests in fantasy lore Monks in fantasy lore Dirgible: Those pictures are monks in history, and historical folklore. And if fantasy monks -were- like that, I wouldn't have any problem with them. In Baldur's Gate, they're clearly more like Messier's picture. They're all about focussing their ki or whatever. East-Asian/Indian concepts. Many other games do the same thing. In PoE they're somewhere in between Miyagi and Friar Tuck. But honestly I don't really have a handle on how they fit in the lore because I've yet to talk to any monk characters or meet any other than random bounty-hunters. So we just have the class description to go on. The thing is, while western martial arts and unarmed combat are a thing (as you illustrated earlier) and while western monks are a thing, they don't really belong together. It was knights and other warriors who practised those fighting skills. And when monks fought, which they sometimes did, they'd fight like knights. (if they had the money) Or if they had to improvise, they'd use staves, like Friar Tuck. A monk class based on staff-combat might be cool, actually.

Obviously, I only buy things I can use. Do I -need- to enchant all my party members' armour to have +2 to stats? No, I'll survive without it, but it definitely helps boost my team. So I buy those diamonds. Do I -need- to give everybody 2 rings, boots, cloaks, etc? Again, I can make do without those extra spells for Aloth or that extra resistance against corrosion damage, but I certainly like having that stuff. Admittedly, the guns were mostly a necessary purchase because arbalests got nerfed, so on a second playthrough I could save money there. Still, my point is that there is plenty of useful stuff for sale in the stores of PoE. If you don't enchant and save all your coin up just in case there's something super-awesome to buy later, then you'll end up with a lot of useless coin. If you just upgrade your stuff when something better appears in stores, you'll get decent power-gains from spending your money. There isn't a lot of super-awesome stuff to buy, but plenty of adequately-awesome things. I find that PoE does a lot better at this than many other games, the Baldur's Gates included, where there just wouldn't be anything remotely useful for sale after a certain point.

Really? I've seen other people and reviews claim this, but honestly I find I'm always short of money and enchanting ingredients, and that's in the third act. Sure, I'll have 20-30K for a while, but then I find a new shop and buy their magic rings and fancy guns and some extra diamonds for stat boosts and I'm broke again. Resting supplies are trivial, sure, except for the hard limit on how many you can carry. But where other resources are concerned I think this game strikes a much better balance than, say, Baldur's Gate 2. (Where money becomes meaningless halfway through chapter 2.) Question for people who feel they have too much money: do you buy the stuff that the stores have for sale? Do you enchant a lot? Or do you just stick with what you find unless a store has something really good?

Tried to play a monk in BG2 once, but I got very bored with him. Spells are much more fun. Anyway, I just remembered a fun fact about western monks: whilst for most of the middle ages they were the ascetic (and/or corrupt and greedy) religious figures copying books we all know and love, (if we've seen "in the name of the rose," anyway) when they first arose in late antiquity they were more seen like wandering bands of violent thugs who would pick fights with pagans and go around smashing up their temples and statues and whatnot. So maybe there's something to be said for fighting monks in D&D style settings after all. (Well, you had warrior monks later in the middle ages too, but those were guys like the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights, and in the game would look more like paladins probably. Those early monks would look the part better.) Edit to Dirgible: Yeah, good point. I should have specified eastern martial arts. The eastern influences are very obvious in the Baldur's Gate style monks, what with the "ki" stuff and all.

Also, since the beginning of the game is much harder than the later stages, having a talent that is helpful in the first 25% can still end up helping you more than something that provides a smaller benefit for the whole game. So I'm not sure it's a dud talent pick even on subsequent playthroughs. Or you can have the best of both worlds, even, by giving the talent to a character you use early on but plan to replace later.

Because firearms and knights in shining armour and pagan priests worshipping nature gods are all part of the same cultural tradition. Sure, firearms only appeared centuries after the Teutonic Knights fought the pagans in eastern Europe, and that was a millennium after the actual druids vanished, but it all took place in western Europe. It's not that much of a stretch to have them appear in the same game. All you really need to combine them is a couple of "what if" scenarios. What if monotheism had never arisen in antiquity and pagan religions like druidism had remained universal? That's all you need, really. Bringing in this one specific part of East-Asian history requires a lot more mental gymnastics. And most D&D games don't actually even try. In a game like Jade Empire, martial arts were very cool. In a game like Baldur's Gate, they feel out of place. Pillars of Eternity tries a bit to reconcile them to the setting, but I don't think they go far enough. Concept wise, I'd probably have dropped the "unarmed combat" thing altogether and made them like Warhammer Flagellants. (Religious fanatics who whip themselves into fervourous frenzies and thus are able to ignore pain and fear almost completely. Would work well with the wound concept.)

Yeah, turning off the tags really helps. What I do find weird, though, is that my character now has a reputation for honesty -and- deceptiveness. 2 points in each. Now, on the one hand this is a fair reflection of his choices, sometimes he's honest, sometimes not. But it's really weird that some NPCs go "well, you have a reputation for honesty" and others go "well, you're deceptive" in reaction to this. Wouldn't it make more sense for points in diametrically opposed traits to cancel eachother out? I.e. my character should have no reputation for either honesty or dishonesty because he can be either or both?

INT is crucial for chanters. The way chants work, each phrase takes a fixed amount of time to speak and the effect will then linger on for a time after that while the chanter starts on the next. INT increases that time. So a high-INT chanter can have the passive buffs of several chants overlap. This obviously makes them -much- better. INT also boosts the area of effect of your invocations, which is also extremely good. Maybe not for summons, but you have plenty powerful invocations that do have one. Like the one that charms all enemies. (Level 2 invocation.) Best of all, the increased AOE from INT is party friendly! If you position right, you can avoid hitting your tank while still hitting everyone he's fighting. Convinced yet? For the rest of your stats it depends on what you want to do. Tanking works, which'd mean high PER and RES. Might would help with dealing damage. Finally, because it takes time for the invocations to become active, I've found it useful to give my chanter some items that let him cast spells. Armour that can cast Sunbeam, for example, gives him a great opening move. Gloves that cast healing lets you use your priest spells for more useful actions. Etc, etc.