Blave

If it's not the money, just buy everything and start a 6 man party. That's what I did and I never took a second look at the PF card game before (though I am playing the tabletop RPG). The cards are basically the same for everyone and learning the one or two extra powers of each character really isn't that hard. Best way to learn the usage of different characters is to actually use them. That being said, if you really just want a single character, I'd go with someone who can use cards effectively, that Kyra and Merisiel can't use well. That would mean either a strength melee character (Valeros or Amiri) or an Arcane Caster (Lem, Seoni and Ezren are all very good, with Seoni being the easiest to handle, in my opinion).

After playing the first adventure once to get a feel for the game, I bought everything and went with a 6 man party (Valeros, Kyra, Merisiel, Harsk, Lem, Seoni) for the first "playthrough" (up to chapter 2 so far, anyway). Having never played the card game before, I didn't have any big troubles even with 6 characters. I don't think it's much (if any) harder than having 4 or less characters. More characters mean more blessings and allies, so you can easily use more to explore faster. More blessings also means you can push pretty much any check into auto-success regions by using blessings and abilities of mutliple (or all) characters. Granted, you can only do so a couple of times per scenario, but for the REALLY important checks (closing all remaining locations when facing the villain or beating the villain) it works very well. More characters open more locations which come with overall more boons to aquire and chose from. More characters also mean you can use more boons, so if you aquire a good one, chances are that someone in your party has the required skill (and space in the deck) to actually use it. Bottom line: 6 character parties work fine.

Yes, it's pretty nice and helpful. I'd definitely get it for characters like Kyra and Merisiel who are decent in combat but might be limited by weapon choice, especially later when you get better magic weapons. Though it's probably not worth it for characters who don't have (m)any weapons to begin with (Lem, Lini).

Yes, the bow check shows your weapon proficiency. It applies to all weapons (if you look at it, it's even crossed with a sword). As far as I know, you are either proficient with all weapons or no weapons - though you still can use many simple weapons like maces and bows without problems if you aren't proficient.

Everyone can use every single weapon/armor in the game. The limiting factor is just the base number in each characters deck and even that can be evaded by getting the cards during a scenario. HOWEVER! More difficult to use weapons (Bows, Swords, Spiked Chains and so on) will give you a -4 penalty to all checks unless you are proficient with weapons. Being proficient with weapons/armors also allows you to use your items better (like burying an armor to negate damage instead of banishing it). Also, be sure to check each weapons description on wheather it uses strength or dexterity for the check. Usually, melee weapons use strength and ranged weapons use dex.

I have multiple copies of Kyra and Merisiel because I frankly didn't understand how to use my first copy of each for subsequent playthroughs. Is there any way to delete a character (other than perma death)? I'd like to get rid of the low-level useless ones.

What happens to the cards that you discard after a scenario bcause they don't fit the character's deck? Are they gone for good? I can't find any way to access them. I can only exchange cards between my characters. Shouldn't there be a card pool or something like that?

Will we need a permanent internet connection to play the game? Or can we play (single player) offline?

The paladin ability is pretty nice. Doesn't stack with the +accuracy aury of an actual paladin, but it's great if you don't have a paladin, use another aura on your paladin or as a free +4 accuracy for caster/ranged characters that keep their distance and thus are out of range of the fronline. It's nice because it also affects abilities and you only need one talent to gain a bonus for at least half of your party. There's a bug report about the monk ability not affecting the spiritshift forms of the druid. If that's fixed at some point, the talent will be very useful for druids. Sneak attack is always good. I guess the cipher ability and the ranger ability could be useful, too. The others are all mediocre once per rest abilities which is a terrible use of a talent.

I don't mind the limit of two supplies, but it woulld be nice if you could pick up more than that. Just let us put them in the stash, and make that part of the stash only available at inns and the stronghold. Would be the same as it is now, except we wouldn't need to take notes and run all over the place to pick up spare supplies. That's really no fun, especially with the loading times.

I think it was already bugged in 2.0 Combat was mostly too chaotic to be absolutely sure, but whenever I used it, it didn't seem to deal any damage and the knockback only occasionally worked. Just tested it in my game and I can confirm that it doesn't do anything at the moment.

As the others have said, you have way too much resolve. It's not that resolve is bad (it's not), but there are much more important stats for a druid. I assume there stats are with items and/or resting bonuses? They seem too high by 5 points for base stats. If you are in the backrow, you can easily survive with resolve 10. Some will even drop it to like 3, but that's a bit too extreme for my taste. 10 is a nice number. Invest the points in Might/Int/Dex/Per instead. I'd concentrate on maxing two of those first (might and int) and put any spare points in the other two. For most casters I'd say go perception as third stat so your spells hit more often and have a higher chance to hit and interrupt. Dex works fine, too, as the druid has quite a few good fast cast spells which you can spam quickly with high dex and a few useful slow spells that get more valuable if you can cast them faster. Bottom line: Drop your resolve to 10 (or a bit lower if you feel save enough), keep your con at 10 (maybe drop it to 9 or 8, but not lower) and get as much as possible in the other 4 stats, focusing on might and Int. Also, here's a decent druid guide for the current patch:

Well yes, they do have those two pretty good damage abilities. The positioning can be a pain, though, and I'm not sure I'd risk running all over the place with con 8. I also said they aren't good at dealing damage with their powers in general because everything besides those two beams is mostly subpar as far as damage goes. Anyway, the video guide I linked expains this very tactic, among other things, so I considered it covered.

Stat spread looks fine and more balanced than the first attempt. Con 8 is ok, but you might need to keep a close eye on your endurance/health. Still, it should work fine for a ranged character. Same goes for resolve 8. Keep your distance and you're unlikely to be interupted often. I would avoid power with short-ish range, though, just to be save. Can't really help with the gun choices. Never really compared them. I'd say just use the best one you can find. Avoid picking a weapon focus until you've decided. There's lots of other talents to take early (Biting Whip, Gunner, Draining Whip, Marksman, Gallant's Focus) that will take you to level 10 before you need to make a final decision. Worst case, you can still simply respec later. Abilities scale only with your attributes. A damaging ability will deal the same damage at level 1 as it will at level 10, unless you boost your might with items in the meantime. There's also the +20% elemental damage talents, you could take, but personally I find the damaging powers of the cipher to be too spread out damage type-wise. Many also deal physical damage, which you can't boost at all. Ciphers in general aren't that great at dealing damage with their powers. They are better at debuffing and crowd control. Pick up a few damage powers, but rely on your gun most of the time. It's pretty easy to hit (and crit) a foe that's blind and paralyzed for big damage. Soul whip with the biting whip upgrade grants a nice +40% bonus to your weapon attacks, so make use of that!

Don't drop your Con to 6. You'll drop dead WAY more often than you want to. You can find decent class-guides on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4UqltmSKaEeCbgMY7nx2U0kngJ77wwhX There's been about one new guide every day since 2.0/WM release and so far every one of them sounds reasonable (from what I can tell). Cipher was actually the first, but you can check out the others if you want, so you know how to build your companions effectively. Personally, I'm playing a ranged Cipher right now. I went with 18 Int, 15 Might and Perception, rest all 10s. I chose Wood Elf for race because the +5 Accuracy against ranged enemies is awesome (and also applies to your powers). I'm using bows, which are faster, but even for guns, you probably don't need such a high Dex. The slow thing about guns is not the attack speed, but the reload speed, which is completely unaffected by dex. Dex 10 will be more than enough. Guns are both better and worse than bows for a cipher. You get focus based on the amount of damage you inflict and guns deal LOTS of damage, resulting in high focus gain. However, you only get focus IF you hit. A few misses/grazes in succession will severely hamper your focus gain. Bows are faster and while a single hit won't give you quite as much focus, a single miss will also not prevent you from gaining focus for like 5 seconds. Also bows don't have the inherent Accuracy penalty of guns and. Guns can work fine, mind you, and I'm not saying bows are better. Just givuing you my reasoning for going bows.

Just imagine your Wizard grabbing and picking up people with telekinesis instread of his arms. Kinda like Force Push/Choke of a Jedi/Sith.

Or make it once per encounter but weaker then the mage spell at low levels.

Easiest way to check this out is using the console to get a character to level 14. There are no new talentss besides the multiclass talents. From the top of my head, Paladins get a chain-heal (Lay on hands that jumps to up to 5 or 6 targets), Fighters an aura that redirects 50% damage from all allies in the aura to the fighter. Both also get one more new ability, I think, but I can't remember. Just check for yourself, really.

Question is: Is that working as intended or a bug? (The novice's suffering stuff, not nature's bounty.)

Ok, looks like I can't upload the files here, so I put them into my dropbox. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/trvwg01ei4ppdd7/AAC4Q1kyNEAbnSyYu72920tfa?dl=0 The save is from a new game I started yesterday. Returned to the first dungeaon after getting enough XP for level 2. You can easily level up and walk into the room th he south to start combat and use spiritshift. The damage of the spiritshift remains the same (18-29) no matter if you take Novice's Suffering or another talent. I don't use any mods. Did a clean reinstall yesterday. I noticed the issue after seeing this post on the forums: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81306-isnt-spirit-form-with-monks-talent-a-bit-op/ The screenshot shows a newly created druid, console'd to level 14 with Novice's Suffering. Got 48-75 damage. In my testing, I "only" got 37-58 in the same scenario, missing the about 15 extra damage Novice's Suffering should give me at level 14.

Not at my PC anymore. I'll add those tomorrow. I do have the issue with all saves, though. Even a newly created druid I leveled using the console didn't get the bonus.

Druid's don't get the damage and accuracy bonuses from Novice's Suffering in my game. Other reports on the forums indicate that the talent should work fine with spiritsihft. The +Accuracy bonus from Weapon Focus: Peasant is applied, so I guess spiritshift attacks are still considered unarmed (unless they are hatchets or spears for some reason).

Ok, I just did a clean reinstall of PoE and Novice's Suffering still doesn't affect spiritshift damage (or it's accuracy, for that matter). That totally sucks :-/

Yes, always have been.

I'm thinking more about a caster-ish druid with Int 18, Might & Perception 15, rest 10. Using Spiritshape early on when I don't have enough spells and later when enemies come too close (which happens more frequently with the new AI, I've heard). Just can't decide which race to pick. Might end up with wood elf because it fits the druid and the +5 accuracy against ranged targets help with spells. Assuming I get Novice's Suffering to work, what else works with spiritshape? I know about Weapon Focus Peasant and the +4 Accuracy from the paladin talent work too. How about two-weapon style? Does that affect the speed of the claws? Also, what would be the best form for occasional melee? Stag is nice but the carnage being once per rest kinda sucks. The increased defenses are nice, too. I might end up taking either stag or Bear.