pi2repsion

A good lesson in paying attention to how you initiate combat on trial of iron rather than a problem with paralyzation, surely.

Because what is used in the game isn't the same picture scaled to two different sizes. There's one picture for the character sheet (head and upper body) and one for the UI bar (head and neck, top of shoulders), which is also used for the small heads for selection in the character sheet. So the two pictures depict different portions of the character's body and, moreover, use different aspect ratios. To understand why this is done, try using one of the big character sheet images and scale it down to the small UI bar size without cropping, and you'll end up with character images in the UI bar that look and feel too small. You get MUCH better results graphically when your picture for character selection is based on that purpose and the picture for the character sheet is based on that. So the ultimate answer to WHY it is done the way it is is that it looks better that way and the professional artists know this; as professionals, they know that on a smaller selection area having the head fill most of the area works great and that on larger presentation areas showing more of the person works better than just showing the head. --- You can of course make do with one image, cropping and resampling from the large character sheet image to make the UI bar image, if that's what you want. If you do, I suggest you ensure that your large character sheet image contain as little of the body as possible such that the head fills most of the picture in the downscaled/recropped Ui bar image rather than having the head shrunk significantly in size. You can also automate it with any decent image tool rather than choosing better manual crops by hand, and the quality of that I'll leave to your imagination. As you say you have made 300 images, I imagine you are familiar enough with tools to do this.

If, at level 15, you are going to be defeating what passes at that time for challenging encounters using primarily level 1-4 spells with little use of level 5-8 spells that are then available, then there is a significant problem and it isn't that people can cast level 4 spells per encounter, but that the difficulty level and challenge is seriously screwed up such that the challenges can be beaten using low-level spells. And if you aren't, but it does allow you to blaze through easy encounters without using your many high-level spells, what's the problem? Spells per encounter have nothing to do with power and everything to do with convenience in Pillars of Eternity, as you are never in a situation where husbanding per-rest resources is forced upon you rather than being a choice once you have exited the starter dungeon and have gained access to the overworld map. Rather, the use of camping supplies is weighed against the challenge of encounters; The more challenging encounters are for you, the more you will need to rest to replenish resources, but if the encounters aren't all that challenging and don't drain the health of your party or the high level spells of your casters significantly, then you can just keep going and going without using the per-rest abilities, whether they be spells for casters or per rest abilities for other classes. Your wizards, druids, priests, ciphers, warriors, rogues, etc. will plow through the easy encounters using just their per-encounter abilities. If you think spellcasters are too powerful - and granted, they are very powerful at higher levels - reducing the number of spells they can cast or the power of spells would be the way to go; changing whether spells are per rest or per encounter makes no difference in practice.

I picked it up in White March itself sometime before facing the Alpine Dragon, but I'm afraid I don't remember where.

I can't think of anything that will block you. Just running two wizards rather than one in a party of six feels like it drops the difficulty level by one step, so I'll be curious if there are any encounters that feel the least bit like challenges once all your wizards have access to level 3 spells. (So long as you run with auto-pause on ability use and start encounters from stealth rather than running into enemies, that is.) But the micro!

They have never been needed, but they remain a smart design decision. They don't make the priests, druids, or wizards any more powerful in battle; Regardless of whether spells are per rest or per encounter, the player will always have the maximum number of spells available in all encounters that are important to the player due to resting. What they do is to cut down on the time spent on backtracking for camping supplies while fighting trivial encounters, by letting players go further without rests so long as they are facing encounters that are so much easier than what the party is capable of fighting, that the casters don't need to use many of their higher level spells, while still having the camping supply limit act as a spur to not resting overmuch to be in perfect shape for every encounter. Something that doesn't make a difference in difficult encounters but smoothes out game logistics without reducing the difficulty when fighting trivial challenges? Sounds like a winning design to me.

As I haven't noticed any performance issues impeding my play, I personally don't see the need and am wondering what performance issues you are thinking of. Just what is the problem you are trying to address? Are you referring to how loading and saving takes longer time over the course of the game as more data accumulates? (And if so, just how long times are you battling with that you consider this an issue?) Something else? EDIT: Just to be clear, I am not dismissing that you or others might be suffering from performance issues.

I'm not disagreeing with your general point that it is all about knowing when to use which spells, but I have to mention that... Fireballs are awesome, jsaving! Once you've got enough spell slots to spam them, that is.* Not that Kalakoth's Minor Blights aren't awesome too, but it is the choice between very high damage per second (fireball spam with large radius under DAoM hitting lots of targets) and high sustained damage at a low cost in spell slots (slower blight throwing with medium radius under DAoM hitting fewer targets). And once you reach level 7 and have the Shadowflame frostball, and start out hitting enemies with a Shadowflame first (crushing the reflex save of any enemy that the paralysis doesn't miss) before spamming the fireballs, most of your fireballs and frostballs will crit, making it even more absurd, relegating blights to situations where you for whatever reason want to preserve spells, where there are only few enemies, or where a lot of enemies with low DR are gathered very closely together so you get most out of the Blast effect. Both blights and fireballs have their different roles to shine in, and switching to fireball as your main spell damage will only leave you feeling ineffective if you don't play to its strengths. *i.e. level 5+ and the relevant ring to boost L3 slots.

Yes, except my wizard's large number of known spells would also be deleted. While that is true, it is certainly something you can work around by scribing all the spells you know in separate grimoires and then paying to relearn them. It is a pain in the arse if you haven't kept a stock of Grimoire's around and have to collect new ones from fallen enemies, but it is an option, it works perfectly, and if you are far enough in the game that you have a large number of known spells, you are very likely to have more than enough money and nothing to spend it on to do this. An alternative if you don't have any surplus grimoires and don't want to spent time hunting down wizards would be hiring adventurer wizards in the inn, leveling them up picking spells you don't have in your book after respeccing, and scribing their spells. I'm not saying this as some snide comment to imply that your concern is unwarranted, mind you, just pointing out that as problems go it is one that is minor and easily dealt with by the player.

I would suggest you start a thread dedicated to the subject of that RPS post and how it relates to Pillars of Eternity, if you are interested in discussion. It would make a lot more sense than posting it in this thread, as the OP was looking for a "boring damage dealer" using magic and afraid that the Wizard didn't qualify, so your otherwise interesting article would seem to have little relevance to the topic being discussed.

You've got several options: a) Revive with another paladin or a priest after being knocked out. b) Wear an item with second chance and get knocked out. As for being knocked out, it is trivial to arrange if you don't want to wait for it to happen naturally during play. Just disable the AI script for your paladin and send him alone to stand next to some enemies. They'll knock him out sooner or later. The Redeemer's ultimate upgrade is the second-easiest one to attain of all the Soulbound weapons (Eder comes with a second chance armour, there's a second chance ring for sale in Defiance Bay, and arranging to get knocked out 5 times only requires you to fight any 5 fights), only the Grey Sleeper's being easier. You'll have your superb Redeemer in no time.

The problem is not that the confused, charmed, or dominated party members or enemies attack their friends. That's what the affliction is supposed to do. The problem is that other party members, who are NOT charmed, dominated, or confused, and who live in a world where they understand the concept of such spells (and may even use them themselves), happily and sometimes immediately attack party members who are so afflicted, saying, "damn, somebody charmed my friend! I'd better stop killing our enemies and kill him instead before the spell's duration runs out; I do this utterly idiotic action because I am under AI control". And yes, I completely accept that if party AI starts acting sensibly in that regard, so should enemy AI. A spell causing one enemy to change sides temporarily should never cause those unaffected by it to concentrate on killing their compatriot over their enemies. The current functionality has been an annoyance since the game's 1.0 release, as it is a) Bloody hard to justify, and b) An annoyance during play where you enable AI functionality, which is of increased importance in 2.0. so it would be really nice if it was changed. It is the sort of thing I was expecting not to see changed until the sequel to Pillars of Eternity, but if there's a chance to get it changed before White March part 2, I'm all for it.

Indeed. While there are many items that improve a wizard's performance, it would be hard to say that any were really important or, even worse, essential. You don't need a good weapon. You don't need good defenses or a good high DR armour unless you want to be a heavily armoured melee wizard. Not that having a good weapon or good defenses isn't useful, but it is much lower priority than for anybody else. For the ranged wizard, it makes focusing on stacking stat upgrades an eminently sensible solution. As an example, at the time I entered act 3, my wizard was using +2 Int helm. +2 Mig armour with 2DR, 5% recovery penalty.* +3 Per cloak. +3 Con belt. +3 Dex ring. +15 health boots the ring of wizardry that grants extra 3rd level spells spellpower bracers an excellent rod, that is used when I can't be arsed to fight in trivial combats but let the AI take over while the party chops stuff up. In other words, any ranged implement would do here. * Paying 5% recovery penalty for style is an acceptable tradeoff, and the 5% recovery penalty robes have style in spades** when compared to the DR0, 0% penalty Dyrwood Clothing, even if they do invite frostbite in colder climes. Which is fortunately not modeled in the game. ** Though frankly they don't look all that practical for adventuring. I guess the tailor was suffering from a shortage of cloth to leave so much flesh exposed. But he did well with what he had!

Two good tank 1-handers are Shatterstar (shop in Copperlane) and Measured Restraint (Endless paths level 2). Both give +1 Engagement. Shattarstar is a war hammer that does extra damage on crits, Measured Restraint is a rapier (for +5 accuracy) and starts out with Accuracy 3 (+12) enchant.

Well at least you gave me an idea on what to look for, im gonna think about that sneak attack and the dangerous implements, if i really need them or i can replace them with the lighting and corrode talents, im not really a fan of bosting too much pasive auto-attacks and the dangerous implements sounds really dangerous lol considering that i will wave a really low con to begin with. 3hp per attack is next to nothing at higher levels - if you don't just ignore it or get it wiped out by a healing wave from Consecrated Ground, there's always putting a Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon on a few enemies to heal yourself. (It is short range and average cast time, but it is a useful thing to slot as one of the extra 2nd level spells when you are not far enough in the game that losing a few hitpoints per attack doesn't matter much. It is preferable not to be in a position to use it due to its very short 5m range, but it is an option). That said, you definitely have a point regarding such auto-attacks - most of the time you'll be using spells, after all. But which spells are you going to be using? Those spells are almost invariably going to be fire or frost spells - the two elemental types I picked talents for, as most of the good damage spells of all spell levels deal those two types of damage, and both of the two fast cast AOEs for level 3 and 4 are these two types as well. The best as a third would be corrode, so if you are going for a third, pick this, due to spell level 2 having Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon, Necrotic Lance, and (in 2.01, but not 2.00, alas for me, Concelhaut's Draining Missiles). And that's about it. You are not going to use the 3rd level Noxious Burst corrode AOE all that often, as it is the same spell level as fireball and has roughly equivalent stats overall, but takes average time to cast rather than being a fast cast. Sure, it sickens too, but you are better off chaining more spells, and you only have four slots available. You are also not going to use the 6th level Death Ring... well, okay, you might, but it is outdamaged by Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, so the number of spells that you'll be using regularly that are boosted by the corrode talent is quite low. Lightning is even worse off. Are you going to be using the level 1 Jolting Touch (short range, 1 target + 2 jump targets) when there's Fan of Flames (huge cone shaped AOE) and Ghost Blades (huge cone shaped Foe AOE) to be had? Or level 3 crackling bolt to zap a line rather than fireball to fry a circular area? There might be such situations, but... not often. And as for level 6 Chain Lightning? Sure, it is nice, deals high damage to the target and 5 jump targets, but we are talking about spell level 6, which also provides Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, which slams down a huge pillar that pulses low Foe AOE damage and hobbles during its lifetime (14s with my character's INT). Over its lifetime it deals a lot more damage, it hobbles, and, of course, it hits all foes within its AOE range, not "up to six of them". And then there's Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst at level 6, which isn't elemental but is fast cast, FoE AOE, and centered on the caster. In other words, if you are not using your 6th level spells to cast the great control spells, the Hex and the Adragan's Gaze but want to do damage, Chain Lightning is probably not the spell you'll want to use in most cases. (Though there may be circumstances where its ability to jump to hit targets far away is beneficial, or when jumping back and forth between two or three targets might be useful but... most of the time when you are facing many enemies they tend to clump in areas ideal for AOE spells.)

All the elemental damage talents are worth it, but there are four of them, and you only get 7 talents total in 14 levels, so if you take them all you are left with a mere 3 talents for everything else. In my old 1.0 build, which I posted in these forums back then, I think I recommended picking up 3-4 of them out of the 6 talents to level 12, but times have changed due to my shift from RES to PER, the higher levelcap, and the new talents. As you can see, in my build I managed to find room for only two of them (the best two for the build, fire and frost), because I considered getting all three Implement boosting talents, the Interruption talent, and the baby sneak attack talent more important than getting the full set. (The baby sneak attack's +15% beating any +20% to one element when I am so late in the game that most enemies are almost always affected by something enabling it, but not really worth picking up earlier.) It would be pretty to have the full set... but while that would be useful and the talents on their own worth having, I just can't see it as being as useful, given the alternatives alternatives available.

I went with: 2: Blast 4: Penetrating Blast 6: Scion of Flame 8: Dangerous Implements 10: Interrupting Blows 12: Secrets of Rime 14: not reached yet, but I'm probably going to pick Apprentice's Sneak Attack. I should arguably have picked this already at level 12. The reason for these talents is fairly simple. Since my wizard is rather frail with con 3, he is supposed to stay safely at range as much as possible, so I don't want him fighting in melee using Citzal's Spirit Lance when he's low on spell but bombarding them with Kalikoth's Minor Blights. Kalikoth's Minor Blights is one of the more outrageous spells in the game due to how it interacts with talents; It allows you to throw ranged blight attacks that do AOE damage of one of the four elements... and it is considered a wizard implement. So if you've got the Blast talent, it will trigger for every enemy hit. While the initial blight elemental damage is pretty high in itself, the blunt Blast damage from multiple overlapping Blasts' triggered can get pretty ridiculous if lots of enemies with low DR are clumped together. And when they aren't? Well, then there's still the already respectable blight damage. The Minor Blight spell is available at spell level 3, which is character level 5, one of the most potent wizard spell levels as it is shared with Deletrious Alacrity of Motion, Fireball, and Llengrath's Displaced Image. (And other goodies, but if you are going with a blaster wizard, picking these four for your regular grimoire is a really good idea). So obviously getting all three talents that apply to implements quickly is high priority, and, as a bonus, they also help while hitting stuff with your normal wand during the early levels where you don't have that many spells to play with. Note that the Minor Blights (or the Spirit Lance, the AOE melee equivalent) don't result in a higher damage per second than spamming spells - for dps purposes spamming AOE spells is better - but the Minor Blights spell has a 60 second duration. With my current 21 Int, that means casting it gives me a superb AOE weapon to use for 93 seconds which don't prevent me from casting other spells, e.g. control spells, while it is active. So it has a much, much, higher total damage potential over time - superb for when you wish to conserve spells for whatever reason or just don't have all that many spells yet. I nevertheless delayed the Dangerous Implements to level 8 because hitpoints aren't all that high at level 6 (though of course Infuse with Vital Essence helps a great deal there), Fireball has just become available and is, together with Fan of Flames, go-to spells when things need to be done in the early and mid-levels, and the 1 in 4 Minor Blight that are fire aspected also benefit from Scion of Flames anyway. Ah, well, it can be argued either way, but apart from the three Implement talents I'd definitely get the Fire talent as one of the first four talents. It is just so useful. So those are the obvious first four talents; Grimoire Slam is a ridiculous suggestion for this wizard - any enemy that is close is either handled by one of the bodyguards (the rest of the party) or blasted by AOE or control spells placed so it overlaps the bodyguard and as many others as possible. Likewise, Arcane Veil is very high deflection short duration buff, and while it is certainly very good at what it does, there are fast cast spells that improve protection and survivability and while not as strong, they have much longer duration. And furthermore, I'd much rather improve my blasting talents. So for levels 10-14, the elemental damage talents are obvious choices, but they are not the only ones. This character is really good at interrupting stuff as damaging spells cause an interrupt check and perception starts at 16 (+18 interrupt), and the wizard is going to impose a lot of interrupt checks on enemies. You can pretty much shut down most ranged characters that stay at range shooting or casting spells by casting Wall of Fire on them, each tick of flames causing an interrupt check. Nevertheless, why not improve on a good thing? Hence the Interrupting Blows for another +15. (And my character wears a +3 perception cloak, just to make things more obnoxious for the enemies). When I cast a single fireball on a horde of POTD enemies, many of them are interrupted, and when I cast several, most are. (And if I keep it up most die, but that's another issue). And by the time I reach level 10, I have got a lot of blasting spells to play with and use at abandon if I'm willing to rest after the fight. Why give enemies the change to act if I can avoid it? So that's my level 10. For level 12 and the as yet unreached 14, it was a question of picking up even more elemental damage or getting the rogue cross-class talent. The rogue baby sneak attack would be useful for this build from around level 7 or so, when I first started throwing around paralyzing shadowflames, but I had higher priorities and not everything is always prone, paralyzed, or otherwise debuffed (though I certainly try). By level 12, most enemies are afflicted by one or more afflictions as I get going, whether it is hitting them with shadowflames, slumber, slicken, or just burning a 6th level slot on hexing the lot. Of the remaining elemental, Frost is the most useful due to there being good frost AOEs at level 4, 5, and 6. I picked it up at 12, but it was a tossup between that and the baby rogue sneak attack. (I don't use the level 5 frost spell so often because it requires my wizard to stand exposed just like with Fan of Flames, but it is very powerful. Moreover, the level 4 and 6 frost spells are pure gold). The following key spells are almost always in my grimoire. I've marked extra non-essential slots that I cycle spell through as appropriate in [x]. Mostly these extra spells have other damage types or debuffs. I have marked with [F] those that are fast cast. 1: [0] Fan of Flames, Ghost Blades, Slicken, Spirit Shield[F] or Eldritch Aim[F]* depending on circumstances. 2: [2] Infuse With Vital Essence[F], Merciless Gaze[F]** 3: [0] Deleterious Alacrity of Motion[F], Fireball[F], Kalikoth's Minor Blights, Llengrath's Displaced Image[F]. 4: [2] Ninagauth's Shadowflame[F]***, Wall of Fire 5: [1] Call to Slumber, Llengrath's Safeguard[F], Malignant Cloud 6: [1] Arkemyr's Capricious Hex, Gaze of the Adragan, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar. 7: [2] Delayed Fireball[F], Substantial Phantom**** * Spirit Shield as the 4th due to concentration bonus, Eldritch Aim as 4th when fighting Dragons or other really nasty stuff. Eldritch Aim has such a short duration, but as it stacks with the Priest and Paladin accuracy buffs, when you really, desperately, want to hit, it is great to cast this first. ** My Priest can cast Dire Blessing, but as I usually want him to cast Devotions of the Faithful first, my wizard can go through a lot of spells before the priest is done casting both those two spells. And sometimes there are other types of protection that are more important too. So better open up with a Fast cast Merciless Gaze; If it is overridden later on by Dire Blessing, no problem. *** Requires you to do a simple quest in White March. Until you get this, you'll probably want Minoletta's Concussive Missiles as a 4th level spell. Afterwards, eh. Shadowflame is so fun. **** I had the 4th level Essential Phantom always in the grimoire until I got access to the 7th level Substantial Phantom. You may wonder at the absence of Citzal's Martial Power as a 6th level spell. It is a truly awesome spell, that makes it even funnier to throw Blights. But as it also disables spellcasting for its duration (46.5s for me), I find I heavily dislike using it in practice. EDIT: It goes without saying, that in every single fight where I am willing to use spells once I have hit level 5, the very first spell I cast is Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Almost always followed by casting Infuse With Vital Essence and Merciless Gaze as #2 and #3, before following it up with whatever seems appropriate. EDIT2: Bah, I should probably take this together with my original post, tighten the writing, and put it with the other class guides.

If that is considered a bug rather than a feature, then yes, it might be worth using once it is changed. On the other hand, it isn't exactly as if enchanting anything with Exceptional is expensive or difficult, and weighing -1 movement speed vs 1 overbearing wave+dancing bolts when you can easily get excellent plate armour without any drawbacks can be a non-trivial choice depending on how you use your characters. On the other hand, it looks pretty nice when worn, and style doesn't count for nothing.

Wizard... garbage? The class was great in 1.0, and it remains great in 2.0. It is the highest damaging class by far if you choose to focus on its AOE aspects, because it can burn through highly damaging spells faster than anybody else and then settle down to throwing Minor Blights (an AOE ranged attack that is affected by the Blast, Penetrating Blast, and Dangerous Implements talents... and the elemental talents too, just for good measure). Don't get me wrong - Druids have great AOE spells too, but they can't cast them anywhere near as fast, giving the enemies a lot more time alive to act against your team, and when they run out of spells, that's it. They don't have the option, like wizards do, of using a single spell to turn them into melee or ranged AOE monsters for more than a minute. Druids strengths are that they get healing, control, and shapeshifting together with their strong AOE, and that they have access to all their spells in combat, but they just don't measure up to wizards in the damage department (or control department, for that matter). It is the best crowd controller if you concentrate on that. It is also has higher dps on single targets than rogues for as long as you have spells if you focus on that aspect, due to the ability to spam spells under Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. But when the Wizard runs out of spells, rogues will just keep going like clockwork while the wizard's single target damageoutput plummets in comparison. This is mostly only relevant in the early game and on bosses, and only on the higher difficulty levels, but it is a concern and why this is seldom a good way to specialize your wizard's grimoire. Rogues, fighters, barbarians, and others who think that bashing enemies with tools is a great idea still have a role to play. Of course, the wizard won't be all these things at once due to the limited space for spells in your grimoires, and you'll want to include a few self-buffing defense spells as well, but that is all to the good. If a wizard had access to all his spells at all times like priests and druids, then the wizard spells would need to be hit with a serious nerfhammer. As it is, you can choose to a spell selection that leaves him great in one area, decent to good in another, and still have some good self buffs, and that's more than enough regardless of whether you want to make a CC or damagedealing monster. If anything, it became even more absurdly powerful in 2.0 due to the introduction of new spells like the 4th level Shadowflame frost fireball spell that does more damage than the 3rd level fireball, paralyzes, and retain the things that makes fireball great: good range, good AOE radius, and being FAST. Once you gain access to 4th level spells at level 7, you can pretty much burn down any POTD encounter that doesn't include some sort of boss by your wizard casting Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Merciless Gaze, and then chaining the fire and frost balls while everybody else tries to get off their first 2 or 3 actions. If you want to rest after the encounter, that is. If you want to rest less, you might settle for throwing a few good spells and bombarding with Blights while the rest of the group gets to act too. ------ In 1.0 I played a wizard on hard, and it was pretty easy. In 2.0 I am now playing a wizard on POTD, and while it is certainly a greater challenge, it is hard to shake the feeling that the wizard trivializes most of the content, and that the time when I ran two wizards (main + Aloth) until I picked up the Devil of Caroc was equivalent to bumping down the difficulty level one notch to hard. My current POTD playthrough has just finished White March (excluding Crägholdt), act 2, the first set of four bounty quests, and 10 levels of the Endless Paths; Entering Hearthsong, the damage breakdown is as following: 21994 dmg. Durance the priest (95.5 highest) -- 1h+sh. Picked him up at level 2. 27274 dmg. Pallegina the paladin (61.1 highest) -- 1h+sh. Picked her up at level 4. 49865 dmg. Kana the chanter (48.7 highest) -- bow. Picked him up at level 2. 72867 dmg. Eder the fighter (81.6 highest) -- 2H. Picked him up at level 2. 76584 dmg. Devil of Caroc the rogue (215.5 highest) -- 2H. Picked her up at level 7. (Used Aloth until then, picked up at level 2. He did 26094 damage). 220084 dmg. Elflaed the wizard (165.8 highest) - SPELLS. BLIGHTS. CARNAGE AND CONTROL. And a rod for when fighting something trivial where I can't be arsed to cast spells but let the others chop up stuff. So my wizard - who's an optimized blasting wizard - has done 220084/(21994+27274+49865+72867+76584+26094+220084) ~ 44.5% of total party damage so far. Of course, if I had focused on maximizing ability use by the other characters rather than my wizard, or had made my wizard more of a control wizard, setting up the situations such that the other characters would do more damage against immobilized (and later petrified) opponents, the wizard's proportion of damageoutput would have been smaller, but I built this playthrough around the blaster wizard with the companions in supporting roles to make up for the wizard's shortcomings, and it certainly worked exceedingly well so far. Pale Elf +1 dex, +1 per (for the 10 Fire/Frost DR; Wood Elf for Distant Advantage is all round better due to the increased accuracy on and deflection from distant attacks, but I played a Wood Elf the first time around and there is more than enough fire and frost damage from enemies to make the Pale Elf's protection worthwhile) Old Valia for +1 Int. 18 Might 3 Constitution 19 Dexterity 16 Perception 19 Intelligence 3 Resolve. Armour: Berathian Priest Robes (5% recovery penalty)

If you are going for that more offensive paladin you posted, Elthalas, you really ought to pick up either Weapon Focus: Soldier or Weapon Focus: Knight. The Soldier focus is more generally useful for the paladin you describe, using 1h+sh and 2h interchangeably, but the Knight focus might be more appropriate with the backstory depending on whether you see his father's background as being a feudal knight who joined the Kind Wayfarer's of perhaps, an ex-soldier, or something else entirely. I did have fun writing up that asthmatic giant, though. If I ever do start a third playthrough of the game, perhaps it will be his time to shine.

There is one idiotic medium shield with 13/12 enchantment used up... which funnily enough does not spend any of those 13 points on fine, excellent, or superb. It has 12 def, -4 acc, 10% chance to reflect ranged attacks, bash 1 (6-9 damage), and 5% on crit to castt Pillar of Faith (1/rest), which makes it a poster child for how POE's enchantment/itemization system conspire to make otherwise interesting items pretty much worthless, restricting the armour/weapons people actually use to those with only a few effects such that there's room for the quality enchant, proofing, stat boosting, etc. With regards to armour, there's a heavy plate (white crest) which has a 1/rest overbearing wave ability (2pts), 1/rest dancing bolts ability (1pt), and comes with a permanent -1 speed (2pt). So that's 5/12 spent before quality, attribute bonus, and proofing. It looks gorgeous, but unless you are desperately in need of a slow front line fighter with a 1-cast of overbearing wave, you'd be better off with any old plate armour starting enchanted with quality, +2 to the stat of your choice, and proofing of your choice. While there are nice accessories, there is exactly one good piece of armour, and that is the Wayfarer's Hide, which as the name says is hide armour. It is 25% recovery penalty, is Superb, grants +15 defense vs Hobbled, Stuck, and Paralyze, and has the ability 1/rest to cast Nature's Vigor (12s). While 25% recovery penalty is higher than what is nice on the rear line, a Durgan Steel enchant will bring that down to 10% recovery penalty, and a 10% penalty for DR 11 (14 pierce, 14 freeze, 6 corrode), with +15 bonus against three types of CC, and with enough points left over for proofing and +1 to a stat makes for a very reasonable light armour without requiring you to spend precious Adra Dragon scales on getting the superb quality.

It won't get better once you get to humans, unless you are lucky and kill some of those that are correctly marked. There are unfortunately lots of enemies that don't count for kills as human or otherwise when killing them with Nightshroud. This also affects the other weapons (e.g. not all blights count for the Greenstone staf blight kills), but Nightshroud has so high total kill numbers needed that it is more obvious. As an example, the Skaenite cultist temple outside Dyrford which appears to be full of humans won't actually be awarding you kills. Known issue - see e.g. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81698-nightshroud-not-registering-human-kills/?hl=nightshroud or similar thread for other soulbound weapons.

Good to hear.

So, requirements are PE, IN, RE >= 16, paladin, roleplaying, not POTD, something that feels rewarding to play with stats that work for the build without being a mix-maxed stat monster. How about a kind-hearted asthmatic giant, who was born in Aedyr, became a respected clergyman, and felt the call to join a martial holy order defending what he believed in? Not the strongest of giants, but a good friend and protector, a respected leader of men, who never let his frail health stop him from doing what he felt right. Race: Coastal Aumaua (it would be strange to see an Island Aumaua from Aedyr, so Coastal it is. Coastal also has nice bonuses for staying on your feet.) Origin: Aedyr Background: Clergyman Shieldbearers of St. Elcga. (The Aedyran order of holy warriors. +Diplomatic/Honest. - Aggressive/Cruel) 11 Might 8 Constitution 10 Dexterity 16 Perception 17 Intelligence 16 Resolve Defense modifiers: -2 Fortitude, +12 Reflex, +26 Will. ...Sure, the Fortitude save is low, but what would you expect from a giant with asthma? And Faith & Conviction means the character is no worse off than non-paladins starting with +8 Fortitude. Still, it is something to shore up with equipment along the way, no doubt. 1h+shield user. Using the paladin-only buckler from Gilded Vale for most of the game for +5 all defenses for himself and every nearby companion, and whatever 1h you prefer - from a game mechanics perspective, ideally one that either has +1 Engagement Limit or one that applies some sort of debuff when it hits; This giant isn't going to be doing much damage, but he is going to be hitting. The following build focuses on giving you many abilities to support the party and save the day, but does not attempt to maximize deflection, because, while nice, it isn't strictly needed, and the paladin will have really high deflection even without taking things like Cautious Attack and Superior Deflection due high Resolve, Faith and Conviction, and wielding the paladin buckler that gives 8 (buckler) + 0-12 (quality) + 5 (herald effect from buckler) + 6 (Weapon and Shield Style) = 19-31 deflection. (Though one would probably want those talents anyhow playing POTD... but you are not playing POTD.) 1. Lay on Hands. 2. (Def) Weapon and Shield Style. 3. Zealous Endurance or Focus depending on party need. Endurance would be most thematic. 4. (Def) Hold the Line. (Yay, two engagement. And engagement is still valuable in 2.0, just not as important as it was previously.) 5. Flames of Devotion 6. (Cla) Shielding Flames. 7. Reviving or Liberating Exhortation. 8. (Def) Bear's Fortitude. 9. Reviving or Liberating Exhortation. (The one not taken at 7.) 10. (Cla) Greater Lay on Hands. 11. Hastening Exhortation. (It is only 3/rest, not /encounter, but it is +20% attack speed for 40.5s with 17int to an ally, and that's worth a lot in important fights). 12. (Cla) Deep Faith or (Uti) Scion of Flame. 13. Sacred Immolation. 14. (Cla) Deep Faith or Scion of Flame. (The one not taken at 12.) (Hey, 20% extra damage on Sacred Immolation isn't too shabby. Worth a talent? Good question, but all the low hanging fruit has already been taken at that point unless you desperately want to maximize deflection.)

Less trolling accusations Torm51 and Tennisgolfboll, please. Why spoil the friendly mood? A quick search of the technical support forum reveals that there were two bug reports about Mental Fortress not always working properly back in April and nothing more recent. If you know that it often does not work now, it can only be because you have tested it recently, unlike those of us, like me, who have been explaining to the OP how it is supposed to work and thought it did work. Thus I implore you to do us all a favour and file a proper bug report with attached data that will convince the developers that it is bugged.