Balbanes

Do you need to choose the chest over the crewman? My PoE save chose Galawain and I got nothing, but that could be because my prize went overboard.

+1 I've been limiting my commands to enemies that I'm engaging (I forget the script verbiage; sorry). Doesn't help with Fighters like Eder if they're Engaging multiple targets, but works fine on my melee DPS units. Also, adding a timer for that set of commands in nice. It's not as good as the conditional auto-attack logic you want because it's triggered on time rather than the condition expiring, but it's a good enough stop-gap until the inevitable patch. Honestly, I'm finding the scripting great fun. My characters keep doing stupid things, only for me to realize that they're doing *exactly* what I stupidly asked them to do. I look forward to players sharing their uber-scripts in the future!

Ahh, a variation of triangular numbers. To get assist bonus n, one needs a total companion skill level of n(n-1)/2 + 1.

I don't think you'd want dual daggers since the modal malus would then affect both of them, but having a dagger in the off-hand might be nice. Especially if you prioritize hitting/criting more than damage. Note that the dagger modal only boosts defection as to melee attacks as opposed to generally, though.

I'm sure I'll try several builds within the first week. I had deep restart-itus with PoE 1, and I have no reason to believe it will abate given the wealth of new character building options.

No sleep. No sleep for this Watcher!

I plan on using small shields on my casters. Now that there are one-handed implements, might as well get that Deflection boost.

I dunno, I thought ranger pets made reasonably good off-tanks in PoE 1 (after ranger was rebalanced, natch). They could never hold a line on their own, but their DR made them pretty good at picking up anyone the main tank(s) failed to hold.