Rafeil

I think pure priest for Xoti is better. Single class fighter for a sturdier Eder tank, or Swashbuckler for a more DPS tank. If you go swash with Eder, he can put more debuffs on enemies (persistent distraction talent), which makes Ranger/Rogue Maia do lots of damage (deathblows talent), otherwise, pure Ranger Maia is good. Ranger/Wiz might be good if you only get self-buffs that don't have long cast/recovery time. If you really want a ranged support, then Troubadour is really good. With high Int, you can have several passive buffs going at once, and you can also summon tons of skeletons passively later, like Boeroer said above.

I love that FAQ and things like that are why I miss gamefaqs. I used to read BG1/2 class analysis for hours.

Ah, that makes sense. And it's perfectly reasonable. I imagine it's just a can of worms bug-wise. It's just so unfortunate On a side note, great profile photo, completely forgot about the Laughing Man.

I really liked the Forgotten Sanctum dungeons. They were so interconnected with each other: doing one thing in one wing could help you in another, and the fact the levels had many entrances/exits connected to neighboring maps was really fun. I also liked the fact that your touchstone was those two wizards, it helped guide you and relay what the whole area was about narrative and theme wise. Honestly, I wish the main story path quests were similarly as robust (not as long, but similar in features). I disliked the Obsidian Isle dungeon (ironically, the entrance to the Forgotten Sanctum). I get that it's Wael and it's supposed to not make sense, but it was difficult to discern any meaning connected to hitting those switches. It was just trial and error and not that fun. I do appreciate that is was trying to be something different, though, and all the doors opened when you solved it, which was nice. I just dislike puzzles that aren't a pattern you have to figure out. There's no pay off because you figured out how to think about something differently, just a surprise that it's suddenly over.

I really love that you get to have some choice over what class your companions are when they're recruited. It makes replays even more fun, it keeps things fresh, and because you've played the game before, you can plan out your party in a new way. The thing is, after replaying the game a few times, it'd be great if I could select any class for companions. Obviously, you can recruit hirelings, but I like the banter, interactions, and interjections of real companions. Mods and other console commands disable achievements, which make me think they're not really sanctioned by obsidian (and besides that, I've earned every achievement, so that's not the point). Obviously, it's silly for people to make their characters invincible and then go get every achievement, which is why I assume they get disabled. But what if there was a Berath Blessing that let you select a fourth option for classes on companion recruitment that let you make their class from scratch. I did this back in the day for BG2. I wanted to play with Minsc, but didn't want another melee, so I turned him into an archer. I liked Jaheira's character, but I wanted a sorcerer in party this go around. The main drawback I see is that you can make characters classes that conflict with their personality (barbarian Aloth), but the thing is, I've already beaten the game. I know the story. I'm choosing to do it this way. And besides, there some conflicts anyway. Serafen can be a barbarian but obviously he still has cipher powers in his introduction. That's why I thought a Berath Blessing made sense, it means you've played the game and you're sacrificing something else for meta knowledge you've gained in previous playthroughs. Mods that do stuff like this are buggy and unsupported for this patch. Anyway, just a thought. Would be so dope!

Nice build, I'm definitely going to try this out! I've been looking for a tanky/support for my main character that doesn't require extensive control, and this looks like it fits the ticket.

Ciphers aren't as OP for a few reasons, but one of them is that now all class have per encounter abilities, making cipher's regenerating (unlimited) casting resource not as powerful in relation to that. Having said that, my first playthrough was a cipher/rogue on the second hardest difficulty and it was great. People will point out that you can't dish out the massive damage other classes can on a PotD playthrough, but having a cipher is still good. They're good to bridge the gap between dps/heal/support, but they're not the best at any of those, and have some unique spells to boot. People tend to dump resolve more get perception.