pi2repsion

Rest assured that it isn't nearly as absurd as Robe of Vecna + Improved Alacrity, but compared to normal speed casting it is pretty damn good. It is "only" a 1.5 factor. The only real downside is that you need to set the game to pause frequently or reduce speed to slow so as not to waste too many frames since you cannot queue up the spells to cast. To get the most out of it maximize your dexterity and wear either clothes (DR0, -0%) or Berathian Priest Robes (DR2, -5%). You've got more than enough time in important battles to cast a few of the Fast self-buffing spells if you feel like you need more survivability so long as you lead with DAoM. In the very longest battles you may want to reserve another third level slot just in case there are still enemies surviving when the first DAoM runs out, but that is a rare case as the wizard grows in power.

Deleterious Alacrity of Motion is the star spell of the third level, functioning effectively as a multiplicative factor on your wizard's power during its duration due to allowing you to cast a lot more spells in that period of time than he would otherwise be able to (and more than other casters can too), and at higher levels wizards are mostly constrained by the time to cast spells, not by spell slots, so long as you rest before important battles. With its long duration, your wizard will be able to end most fights by non-stop casting before the duration runs out. Not that the other spells of the third level are bad - Fireball is really good, for instance, especially when you cast DAoM and spam three fireballs in the blink of an eye at the enemies as they move in to engage your group. Anyhow, I think wizards are fine as they are. They play very differently from Priests, Druids, and Ciphers, which is a primary consideration, they are good at doing their job regardless of whether you want them as blasters, CCers, debuffers, or some mix, and they have self-buffing spells that are strong but mostly useful for emergencies or when stacked, not for general purposes. The only thing they are pretty bad at is working as magically assisted melee combatants; Anybody wanting an Battlemage, Spellsword, Eldritch Knight, etc. duking it out in melee assisted by magic will have his work cut out for him despite the few spells supporting such playstyle. That said, I'm damn sure that somebody will manage to play such a wizard and do well, just to show that it can be done. Let's hear it for whomever first does a PoTD solo with a heavily armoured swordwielding wizard!

Yes. Still, judging by this thread CRPGs need stickers saying "Warning: This is a game of incomplete information. Your actions can have unforeseen consequences, and sometimes they are not what you want."

With a decent intelligence DoAM lasts for 46 seconds, which allows for many more than two spells to be cast accelerated, and any tough battle is likely to take significantly more time than what it takes to cast 3-4 non-hasted combat spells before it is done. And while 2 v 2 combat spells sounds good for druid, 4 v 3, 6 v 4, 8 v 5, 10 v 6 in favour of the wizard doesn't. I am quite happy with my: MIG 18 CON 3 DEX 19 PER 4 INT 19 RES 15 Wood elf wizard, thank you very much. I lose out on perception role playing interactions, but since I'd need HIGH perception for that, not just medium perception, those were not an option anyhow unless I wanted to shaft either MIG, DEX, or INT - merely taking a medium value in one of them, such as DEX, wouldn't be enough to put enough points in PER to reach the 14-16 level where most checks are made. As is, I get all MIG, DEX, and INT roleplaying interactions and, as a bonus, all of the RES as well, since I buff my resolve with items and rest. I've got a hard time seeing how anybody would make any build that didn't end up losing out on some role playing interactions, and I also find it hard to see how you'd build anything but a tank (with high PER, INT, and RES) that would get more of the interactions than I do, given the prevalence of MIG, INT, PER, and RES interactions.

...that raises the obvious question. Does the level 3 fire/slash damage dealing chant stack?

Nice post, hugin7. One question, though. I could have sworn I tested whether Marksman worked with spells a few days ago using my wood elf wizard and found that it didn't apply increased accuracy. It is of course possibly that there was an error in my test methodology, so I have to ask you this before I go to the bother of testing it again, are you sure that it affects spell accuracy?

However, in any important encounter wizards get to cast a lot more spells in a given period of time than a Druid from level 5 and onwards due to Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, and wizards get enough spell slots that you aren't going to run out before you've nuked the enemy in a fraction of the time it would take the druid to do so. Druid: Safe, slow, and with big hits. But for maximum nuking, go wizard.

Higher constitution gives you a higher hitpoint pool so you can survive more hits without healing and bigger hits that might one or two-shot a lower-constitution paladin. Perception and Resolve makes you take much fewer grazes, hits and crits. HOWEVER, this is a fantasy world with in-combat healing of many types, nobody hits hard enough to one- or two-shot a low-constitution paladin, going the avoidance route provides a significant increased avoidance that is very noticeable, so going for the avoidance through perception/resolve rather than damage absorption is the obviously superior choice: If instead you go with lower avoidance and higher hitpoint pool, it just means that you are guaranteeing that you'll be taking more damage that you need to heal, and as healing does not scale to the size of the endurance pool of the target that means more healing spells/potions/other sources required. So if you want to gain maximum survivability with a Paladin*, you stack your avoidance defenses, primarily deflection from maximized perception and resolve, and take whatever constitution you feel you can afford. * Or anybody else that you put in the front line to take a pounding. Ok. So, why Fighter "tank" is most oriented Might and Constitution ? Like Elder... ? Because he isn't "fighter tank", he is Eder. A person with a life of his own, the stout-hearted peasant who went to war and returned a scarred man. Eder's backstory is one that fits a person who's strong and healthy but neither particularly dextrous, intelligent, perceptive, nor of strong resolve, but not clumsy, stupid, oblivious, or without convictions of his own either. NONE of the companions are well designed for the combat roles that players are likely to use them at the way a player created character would be, but that also has the benefit of them not being awful at some of them either. All of them have middle of the road stats that means you can handily use them in most roles and do well enough with them, and Eder isn't any different from the others in that respect. Eder: He can be a decent damagedealer for any player who has chosen to play as a tank and a decent tank for any player that has chosen not to. He isn't particularly good at either role, being outshined in both by a fighter designed for that purpose, but he is more than good enough to do the job depending on which talents and abilities the player picks up. If the developers had given him optimized tank stats, not only would his stats reflect a completely different person (and probably a more boring one, at that), he'd be close to worthless to anybody using him as anything but a tank. You'll see the same pattern with all the characters. Moreover, when you are designing companions intended for use by players who might not understand the stat system and combat engine, it makes sense to create characters with higher constitution because it gives them more time to live for the player to learn from his mistakes. The game is easy enough that once you understand how it works all the companions do well even on hard difficulty, because the game's difficulty isn't balanced around stat-optimized characters. For purposes of build discussions you should expect players to base their answers on how the game mechanics work, not on how companions have had their stats assigned. Take the 3% health/endurance per point of constitution. The difference between 3 (-21%) and 18 (+24) is huge in absolute numbers (the 18 con tank having 1.24/0.79 = 57% more endurance than the 3 con tank), and if the question about tanking was "enemies in the game deliver very large hits that the tank has to survive" or "with extremely limited healing, it is important for the tank to be able to survive a lot of damage without healing" or "there are a lot of unavoidable attacks that the tank just has to soak damage from" then a high constitution tank would make sense. But that's not how encounters in the game work. There are lots of ways to heal, most attacks don't hit all that hard on characters that have good damage reduction, there are few unavoidable attacks, and high deflection is very, very, good in pushing what would else have been crits (doing 1.5x damage) down into the hit range, pushing hits down into graze range, and pushing grazes into misses because the game uses a single-roll attack system for determining type of hit. Does that mean that you should run around with a 3 CON tank? Nooo.... Though it is definitely an option, there are other stats that matter less to you if the sole purpose is building a strong tank, namely might and dexterity. Both constitution and intelligence fall in the "whatever you think is enough to make life comfortable" with regards to endurance and AOE radius.

Higher constitution gives you a higher hitpoint pool so you can survive more hits without healing and bigger hits that might one or two-shot a lower-constitution paladin. Perception and Resolve makes you take much fewer grazes, hits and crits. HOWEVER, this is a fantasy world with in-combat healing of many types, nobody hits hard enough to one- or two-shot a low-constitution paladin, going the avoidance route provides a significant increased avoidance that is very noticeable, so going for the avoidance through perception/resolve rather than damage absorption is the obviously superior choice: If instead you go with lower avoidance and higher hitpoint pool, it just means that you are guaranteeing that you'll be taking more damage that you need to heal, and as healing does not scale to the size of the endurance pool of the target that means more healing spells/potions/other sources required. So if you want to gain maximum survivability with a Paladin*, you stack your avoidance defenses, primarily deflection from maximized perception and resolve, and take whatever constitution you feel you can afford. * Or anybody else that you put in the front line to take a pounding.

I'd advise picking anything except the +1 spell slot ones since you are not going to need many spells in trash encounters, can always rest before important encounters, and will have more than enough spells for the important encounters with those you gain automatically from leveling, so what's the point in going for extra spells? It you are going to use the wizard at all as a blaster, you'd be silly not to take Scion of Flame due to the Fan, the Rolling Flames, and Fireball. 20% more damage when you use what will be your main blasting spells through much of the game, including the end-game when your lowlevel spells become per encounter, is not negligible. You'll also get good mileage out of the +Ice and +Corrosion at the mid-high levels, and you might even find some use for +Lightning with the 6th level Chain Lightning, though obviously this is of less importance. As a nice side effect, you end up with 5 DR to fire/ice/lightning/corrosion, which while not overwhelming might come in handy every now and then. You'll also find good use for them if you want your wizard to be more focused on CC'ing and debuffing doing autoattacks with Blights once you hit third level spells (that spell is seriously one not to overlook). Of course, if you are NOT going to be using your wizard for blasting, ever, and not going to be tossing Blights at your enemy, but solely going to be focused on CC and debuffing, then you might want to skip Scion of Flame, but that seems unlikely given just how strong even the first level fire damage spell is. The Blast line talents are quite useful too, though those primarily benefit you in trash encounters, since in important encounters you should not be autoattacking but spellslinging unless you are a Blight-thrower, something that you have more than enough spell slots for once you reach level 5 and gain access to third level spells. I mean, I could see going for the +spell slot talents if you were determined to try playing a game to gain the "fewer than 10 rests during the game" achievement, but otherwise it seems a bit pointless compared to choosing talents that either improve your spells or your autoattacks, because outside the very early game you aren't going to run out of spells. Heck, if you desperately want that extra slot for an extra Fan of Flames because you are afraid of runnning out of level 1 slots, or whatever, why not scribe a scroll and keep it in reserve for that contingency? My build for a Blaster/CC Wizard goes like this: 2: +Fire (we already have great fire spells) 4: Blast 6: Penetrating Blast 8: +Ice (the great ice spells start at level 9 with spelllevel 5) 10: +Corrosion (we already have good corrosion spells) 12: +Lightning (we got the first really good lightning spell at level 11 with spelllevel 6) The order of +Ice/Corrosion/Lightning comes down to personal preference, really, and just which Ice/Corrosion/Lightning spells do you want to prioritize.

Oh they are dumb, and on purpose. If they weren't then there is no way a tank would be useful unless there is a door to physically block their path, and how often does the latter happen? If they weren't morons they would never even consider a guy in plate, they would beeline for the healers, then kill the casters, then progress in order of decreasing squishiness or dpsitude once the healers are down. Just like players do. But if enemies did that there would be no fun in playing and no point in having different specialties, everyone would just go max dps and hope enough survive at the end of the fight. What we have here are not mobs that are smart or doing things that make sense. We have the usual dumbed down AIs who would do stupid things to let people play and have fun (it shouldn't be too hard to make a mob target healers and casters first), but with a non-existing or non-deterministic system of aggro management. Which makes less sense than the usual MMO trinity. Of course they are dumb. I said as much in the post you quote, repeatedly, so I don't see why are are quoting me as if I claimed they were smart. They just aren't so dumb as to be governed by the aggro-taunt model, which minimizes the need for coherent thought for the human when planning tactics and reacting to evolving situations in combat. And I most assuredly disagree with you that the MMO trinity where the player can always predict what the enemy will do and manipulate it by managing threat levels or ordering it to "attack this target now because I say so" makes more sense for a single-player CRPG than a setup where players cannot fully predict whom the enemy will attack.

Right.. Here is how to deal with the situation in Pillars of Eternity: You forget about the concepts of aggro and taunting and realize that this game is built on old-school CRPG principles where those simplified aggro mechanics, that were originally invented for MMOs such that a bunch of players could play together with a specialized role setup without having to worry about anything approaching real life tactics, don't exist and you have to substitute tactical positioning and area denial via battlefield geography and opportunity attacks using the engagement mechanic to control the battlefield. You accept that AI enemies aren't morons that will stick on their target till it dies or till the player tells them to attack somebody else and are free to change their targeting priorities whenever they feel like it, just like you are. You accept that "kill the one in the dress" is just as valid a tactic for your enemy as it is for you. You accept that that means that other people than those, whom you want to tank, will occasionally get attacked when you mess up or you face enemies that teleport in combat or have long range attacks and your squishies are too close. So you plan for this to avoid not having any way to save your squishies when things go haywire. This game's tactical AI routines are much more forgiving than any Dungeon Master would ever be, because the computer controlled enemies won't accept suffering an attack of opportunity (disengagement attack) in order to attack greater threats or more vulnerable targets, so you are able to take ruthless advantage of this to make melee enemies stick to your "tanks" when the enemies don't have the ability to teleport round in combat. The routines are also pretty dumb when it comes to seeking better positioning in combat, flanking, proper positioning of archers, and spell selection. They just aren't so dumb as to be governed by the aggro-taunt model.

Just to be clear, this bugged ring is the Ring of Protection that is for sale from a merchant in Defiance Bay. There is another Ring of Protection that you can receive by defeating the actor Lumdala (in the quest "the Final Act"). That Ring of Protection only has +10 Fortitude/Reflex/Will stats.

As of 1.03. The Ring of Protection has the effects: Of Fortitude: +10 Fortitude Of Reflex: +10 Reflex Of Will: +10 Will Toughness 2: +4 Fortitude Reflex bonus 2: +4 Reflex Of Resolve: +2 Resolve When you equip it, however, the rings own +10 Fortitude/Reflex stats suppresses its +4 Fortitude/Reflex stats, so equipping the item grants +10 Fortitude/Reflex/Will and +2 Resolve, not +14 Fortitude/Reflex, +10 Will, and +2 Resolve as expected.

It works perfectly fine for roleplaying so long as you divorce your mind from the D&D convention of wizards being wimps because of dumping a STR attribute and instead embrace a fantasy world in which a person's might is as much about inner conviction and willingness to act as it is about physical strength. If you want a real world example, superior drive can substitute for brute strength in a lot of physical activities, though not in all, pressuring the body to perform better. If somebody is to take another person up and shake him like a rag doll, I'd be much more worried about a driven person with normal upper body strength doing it than a strong person who wasn't putting his soul into it, since the body when pressed to its limits is capable of a lot more than people usually feel comfortable with doing. If you want a fantasy example, the wizard's of Glen Cook's Black Company novels might be closer approximation, though admittedly Pillars of Eternity doesn't give wizards the same insane survivability potential.

There is no cheating, but there is a misleading and false thread title. It would be more accurate for the title to say "Acquired the Triple Crown SOLO achievement by quitting the game to avoid death", since the game has not been finished playing with the rules the Triple Crown imposes but has used quitting the game whenever it looked as if death was possible to avoid the Trial of Iron component. Let's face it - the player has finished TWO of the crowns SOLO, not three, and that's certainly worthy of respect and bragging rights. It is an entirely legit way of acquiring the Steam achievement for three by quitting as necessary to avoid death, and it speaks to a remarkable patience, willingness to endure, and possibly a lust for Steam achievements, and it is certainly an achievement of its own. It just isn't the Triple Crown Solo achievement as players understand it, having nothing whatsoever to do with completing a game in Ironman mode.

The obvious question being, for fights where it is important to do as much damage as possible, why are you using autoattacks rather then casting spells until the enemy lies dead before you? With the ability to rest before any important fight, once you gain access to level 3 spells and above it is really hard to run out of spells in important fights where you want to do as much damage as possible, even when casting DAoM to turbocharge your casting speed.

Well, considering that I want my wizard to be primarily casting spells in dangerous encounters rather than using his ranged attack, with the ranged attack something to do in the short breaks when I'm not casting, if any, using a slow-loading ranged weapon just doesn't seem appropriate. A slow heavy damage dealing ranged weapon would help more than a wand/sceptre in the short trash fights where my wizard doesn't use spells (or don't use more than one or two), but the reason I'm not using spells there in the first place is that they are so easy, so optimizing for this situation rather than the more dangerous situation of important fights where I am spellslinging seems a waste. Hence my wizard uses wand or sceptre. The only question is whether it is worth spending any talents on improving his ranged auto-attack damage at all considering how good all the +20%/+5DR talents are if you are playing your wizard as a blaster/CC rather than primarily CC. The fire talent is obligatory due to Fan of Flames, Rolling Flames, and Fireball, and is useful from start, so I see little reason not to make this as the first talent at level 2. Corrode is of use to second, fifth, and sixth level blasting spells. Ice is of use to fifth and sixth level blasting spells. Lightning of use to third and 6th level blasting spells, with the caveat that you are probably not going to be using Cackling Bolt as Fireball is generally superior. All of them are useful if you want to make your wizard into a ranged blight thrower at third level. Since you get six talents in total, you can get all four as well as Blast and either Penetrating Blast or Dangerous Implements, should you so desire. If you want to do that, the proper sequence would be: 2 Fire 4 Blast 6 Penetrating Blast or Dangerous Implements (I'd say Penetrating Blast) 8 Ice (5th level spells coming at level 9) 10 Corrode or Lightning (6th level spells coming at level 11) 12 Corrode or Lightning But again, this is for a wizard who is played primarily as a blaster rather than CC. That said, if played primarily as CC, which talents are there that will help the wizard more? Arcane Veil, Grimoire Slam, or increased number of spell slots? Don't make me laugh.

Wizards have a slow start, but once they hit level 5 and get access to 3rd level spells their feet are firmly set on the path to greatness.

This. So very much. I find that PoE's implementation of the "Holy Trinity" is better than most since at least they don't give the "tanks" taunting abilities that force enemies to engage them but operate on an attack of opportunity engagement system, but there's no hiding that as consequence of the combat model they've chosen, any damage that can seriously threaten a character in heavy armour with defensive talents will slaughter characters without defensive talents who wear less armour. That is why - from a purely min-maxing approach to gameplay - we end up with constitution being a good dump stat for just about everybody except tanks, and we get characters either wearing some of the heaviest armour available, because they are tanking or offtanking, or as little armour as possible if they are not, because wearing armour makes them worse at damagedealing, healing, crowd controlling etc. due to longer action times without significantly affecting their survivability when they occasionally do get attacked. Anybody wearing medium armour for other reasons than looks or some unique enchantment that's somehow powerful enough to be worth the recovery penalty should have their head examined.

Yeah, Kana insisted that he be the one with the beetle items, as that would provide him with a funny answer whenever people asked him what he had in his pocketses. Also, as I use Kana as a ranged Chanter, he's the ideal character for using quick slot items and spell granting items since he isn't locked in melee so can be freely repositioned and has plenty of spare time when not autoattacking or using the rare invocation to use items.

That build and abuse of game mechanics sounds gloriously silly. Congratulations, that was a good find and a better read.

Just saw the same phenomenon today. Strangely enough, the unnamed invisible hostile enemy cannot be attacked either.

Yes, consider a nice optimized elf wizard/old valia. Take 18 MIG, 19 DEX, 19 INT, and you 3 CON, 4 PER, and 3 RES, with 12 points left over. If maximizing the wizard's effectiveness in combat is the goal, then: If you invest them in RES, you are much harder to interrupt, so you've got a decent chance of casting spells while enemies are hitting the wizard, and get a bit higher deflection - and the vast majority of damage wizards will be taking targets deflection. If you invest them in CON, you have more endurance, but you are easy to interrupt. If anybody makes your wizard his punching bag, you'll have a hard time casting the spells needed to free the wizard. If you invest them in PER, you should have your head examined. Which is why the min-maxer invests the leftover points in PER and casts Infuse with Vital Essence and other defenses when needed to buy the time to slaughter whomever is hitting the wizard. If there is a dump stat in Pillars of Eternity, it is constitution, since nearly all other stats are better for all characters except those that tank - and even tanks have stats that are better than constitution.

Here is a 1.03.0526 Windows/Steam save that can reproduce the bug. https://www.dropbox.com/s/1we8qqznze2hoq4/quick_items_lost_bug.rar?dl=0 Load the save. Observe that Kana has two beetle summoning items in his quick slots and a poison dart trap in his inventory. Talk to the innkeeper. Choose party management, select dismiss Kana and accept the resulting 5 man party. Choose party management, recruit Kana and accept the resulting 6 man party. Exit inn interface. Observe that Kana's quick item slots and inventory are now empty. *Wailing and gnashing of teeth optional at this point* Sigh... Now to either redo the last two hours of playing, accept that the nice beetles are gone forever, or find out how to create beetle-summoning items via console.