JerekKruger

Sure, but given that pre-White March a player who used only story companions would have to have a non-Rogue as their main mechanic it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that the same is true before they get DoC. This is especially true given that DoC is the second hardest companion to get in the game and will thus usually be the second to last one the player picks up. By the way, I reread my previous post and it came across as a bit hostile, so apologies for that. I have mixed feelings on this. I think SoA did a better job with NPC companions to BG. It had fewer of them, but they were all pretty well fleshed out with interparty banter and (almost) all of them had a personal quest, whereas BG felt like it was stuffed to the brim with companions, many of whom were available very late and simply worse versions of earlier ones, and there was very little party banter without the addition of mods. Ideally I'd like to see PoE2 get closer to BG2: give us a relatively small selection of well fleshed out companions and add more interparty banter (bring back the actual full dialogue banters that interrupt the game so we don't miss them whilst we're looking at some other part of the map). If this is done well, then having two or more companions with the same class won't feel as redundant as they'll be bringing different personalities to the party.

So what were Obsidian thinking before the White March I exactly? There was no Rogue companion so, according to your argument they were expecting players to simply not take Mechanics at all?

My suspicion is Paladin IS the simplest class to solo PotD, in that it requires relatively little strategy, but as others have said there are plenty of other options which can work (some of which are more powerful than a Paladin when used correctly).

I'd be tempted to say Cipher <=> 9/10 Rogue + 1/2 Wizard.

No it's a good point. This subforum tends to be skewed towards more experienced players for whom even PotD is easy with a full group. Not sure I'd agree regarding Dragon Thrashed. At higher levels when you've accrued lots of brisk recitation, and if you support it with the right gear, it is arguably OP. Well, more precisely it's one of the best AoE abilities in the game and doesn't require rest spam. Of course, against enemies that are very resistant to fire and/or slashing it loses a lot of its power, but outside of that situation it really does melt enemies by itself. Priests certainly could be nerfed a little and remain a top tier class. It would certainly have been a better choice of rebalancing for 3.05 than nerfing the Unlabored Blade . That said, I'm not sure it's a bad thing to have the classes be unbalanced. A newer player can stick with the more powerful classes, then as they become more experienced and want a bigger challenge they can switch to weaker classes. I disagree on the second point. No class other than the Rogue (who's not a buffer) really needs a buff, and the game is already easy enough as is. Now in designing PoE2 Obsidian should certainly take the time to fiddle with all the classes significantly, perhaps changing their roles up a little, but for PoE I think, other than the Rogue, class balance is in a good place. I'd love to see a patch buff the Rogue, but my biggest gripe with them is how boring their abilities are compared to other classes rather than their relative power. I don't take Rogues because when it comes down to a choice between a class who can set themselves on fire, or summon a pair of simulacrum of themselves, I'm hard pressed to pick the class who can pretend to be dead or knock people out. The sabre choice was never really a problem for me. I always felt that sabres were more of a duelist/rogue weapon, so the only class I'd ever used them with were Ciphers and Rogues. I guess I was gimping myself by doing this, but it never really bothered me, there are plenty of powerful non-sabres out there. And once you do reach the stage of finding PoE easy, gimping youself starts to become something appealing.

I believe (though I might be wrong) that the Adra Dragon is immune to petrify. If this is the case it would explain why Gaze isn't working. The first thing to note is you need to do something to counteract the Terrified aura the Dragon emits. That's a -20 Accuracy to everyone affected, and the Dragon has high Defences (especially if you're on vanilla PoE which, I believe, you are), so you'll struggle to hit it with anything. Priests have a spell to fix this. Secondly, the only person ever getting hit by the breath attack should be your main tank. The rest of your party should be spread out and not in its AoE (in fact I don't think she uses the breath attack against single targets at all). Thirdly, you want to try to deal with the non-dragon adds first. It may have been fixed, but it used to be the case that if you hugged the wall going south you could avoid aggroing the Dragon, then when you engage the adds the Dragon would aggro, but she didn't actually come join the fight (she was in the fog of war so perhaps the AI didn't know where you were). This allowed you to kill all the adds, then rebuff your party before attacking the Dragon herself. Finally, it's a hard fight, particularly if you don't have the White March expansions, so it might take a few tries. My first time killing her I had got her down to injured with all my party apart from Sagani KO'd. I discovered that the Adra walks slowly, so I was able to kite her with Sagani, taking the occasional shot which would invariably graze or miss. A good 15+ minutes of this later she finally died, not the most heroic win Good luck.

I don't know for certain, but I suspect that if your character sheets are keeping track of additional experience gained (e.g. they read something like 72,000/66,000) then you will get that extra experience. If, however, they read 66,000/66,000 no matter how much extra experience you are gaining, I expect you're losing the extra experience.

I'm not sure – Chanter is interchangeable with Paladin in my opinion in a tanky support role: AoE Heals, Buffs, debuffs and later AoE damage and CC depending on what you want. You could even use a tanky barbarian if you want to focus on the AoE damage element. Cipher, Druid and Wizard are all interchangeable – they can all provide good AoE CC on demand with damage too if you need it. I'd have at least one of them in any party to fulfil that function. Sure, they're somewhat interchangeable, but your question specified a six man party with no repeated classes. Under those rules I'm probably going to be taking a Cipher, a Wizard AND a Druid if I want to be as powerful as possible, just like I'll probably take a Chanter AND a Paladin. As such the question about whether or not taking a Priest is more powerful boils down to whether a Priest offers more than the remaining five classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Ranger) and I think it does. Also you specified optimality. A Barbarian can fill the role of tanky AoE damager, but I don't think that's the optimal choice compared to a Chanter or late game Paladin.

Well that makes up a lot of (though not all) lost buffs. Given the way your question is phrased I think the answer is no, however the same is true if you replace Priest with Chanter, Cipher, Druid of Wizard at least. In a six man party with no repeated classes you've got a lot of room to work with, so it's not surprising that taking a Priest isn't going to stop you from taking all sorts of other good stuff and good combos.

Are we allowed to use scrolls?

In general bonuses don't stack, for example if you have a helmet that gives +1 Might and a breastplate that gives +1 Might then wearing both won't give you +2 Might. The exception to this rule is weapons (and shields I guess, though as far as I recall there aren't any shields that give bonus to attributes). A weapon will give its bonus on top of a non-weapon attribute bonus. So if you're wearing a helmet that gives +1 Might and wielding Godansthunyr (a warhammer that gives +1 Might) then you will get +2 Might. On the topic of stacking, in general buffs that boost the same thing won't stack either, you'll just get the best of the two. The reason I mention this is that it may eventually be worth respeccing to remove Pallegina's unique attack speed boosting Flames of Devotion if enough of your other characters have better attack speed boosting powers (Deleterious Alacrity of Motion on Wizards, Frenzy on Barbarians, Swift Strikes on Monks etc.).

On the one hand, PotD is a significant step up from Hard (much larger than the difference between Hard and Normal). On the other hand, Raven Darkholme beat the game on PotD with a three man party and no Priest so yeah, totally doable without a Priest. I could have used the example of Harpagornis, who beat the game solo on PotD with a Monk using no gear at all, but if you're looking for a relatively normal experience I think Raven's example is more relevant.

Pallegina: because of their very long reload times (which is unaffected by armour recovery penalties by the way), characters using guns are the least affected by high armour recovery penalties. As such, if you think Pallegina needs the extra protection or benefits of a suit of heavier armour then you won't be losing much by putting her in one. Of course, if she isn't getting hit in combat then there's no benefit from higher DR so you should weigh up whether the other benefits of heavier armour (stat bonuses, bound spells etc.) outweigh the (fairly minor) speed penalty. That said, my personal preference for Pallegina is as a pseudo fire mage. Give her the Scion of Flame talent and Intense Flames, take the Wrath of the Five Suns unique talent she gets and Sacred Immolation at level 13. Also give her the suit of Chainmail that has fireball as a bound spell and, if/when you get it, the Sabre that also has fireball as a bound spell. You now have a very powerful fire based damage dealer. This works for any Paladin, but Pallegina is actually the best at it because Wrath of the Five Suns is really good. Oh also the Outworn Buckler should be in one of your slots. That shield is amazingly good and available very early. Kana: Personally I'd spec Kana as a tank, giving him heavy armour a shield and a tanky main weapon (a hatchet or a weapon with guarding) and relying on Winds of Death and later Dragon Thrashed to do excellent damage whilst he tanks. Chanters are not great at doing damage with their weapon, so better to let them do it with their chants and spec their weapons and armour for toughness. That said, if you are set on using him as an archer then know that whilst bows are still less affected by armour recovery penalties than melee weapons, they are more affected than guns. Basically I'd go with the lightest armour you feel he can get away with whilst usually avoiding being KO'd. Experiment, use something light, if he gets knocked out often, go with something a bit heavier (also consider how you are using him). Sagani: the best bow you can get her (if you have White March then Stormcalled is basically the best in class), a hatchet and shield or a pair of hatchets in her offhand to switch to for defence. Other than that, the same rule applies regarding armour as Kana: lightest you can get away with. Edér: For Eder I would strongly urge you to build him as one of the Lady of Pain builds. Fighters pretty much fill the role of single target DPS/off-tank and (outside of weird specialised builds) nothing else, and the Lady of Pain builds are all excellent examples of these. Not much else to say than that. Durance: I've tried running Durance as an off-tank but it just never seems to work for me. He has great Resolve sure, but because of his low Dexterity it will take him a while to cast all the buffs that make Priests great, and before he has cast them he's pretty fragile. Also giving him armour's just going to slow him down even more, which isn't ideal. Personally I usually give him an arquebus to make use of his Magranic talent, leave him on the back lines and have him cast spells, interdiction and shoot. If you're set on using him as a tank then a shield is pretty much a must (might as well go large since he's not going to do much with his weapon anyway). Hatchet's would probably be the best choice for his weapon, but I personally hate using them on classes other than Druids and Rangers. You'll probably need decent armour, though if you can get away with lighter armour then you'll want to to speed his casting. General advice: I think you're overrating the importance of attributes. This isn't AD&D, the difference between 10 and 18 Might is tiny compared to the difference between 10 and 18 Strength in Baldur's Gate. Barring a few exceptions, the companions stats will only result in a minor disadvantage when using one of the class builds in the list I linked above. Similarly I think you're probably overthinking gear. Other than weapon choice, most gear isn't going to make all that much difference. Generally speaking, when you get a new piece of gear you should just look through your party, see who it would be an upgrade for and then give it to whichever of them it will benefit most. Sure, you might not distribute gear perfectly, but PoE isn't that hard. If you don't believe me, realise that someone has finished it solo, on PotD with a Monk using no gear. Sure, that was a very tough run that required clever strategies, but if that's possible then it should make it clear than with a party it's not going to matter than much who gets what gear.

One of the nice things about Pillars, particularly Act I, is that some of the quests result in genuinely difficult moral choices. I always struggle about what to tell Calisca's sister (I forget her name) about the potion, or whether or not to side with Kolsc or Raedric.

I have to admit, that's part of what makes me want to try it. Just imagine if every Carnage hit generated a Citzal's template which, in turn, could generate Carnage templates and so on... Perhaps there's a reason Obsidian picked Firebrand over Citzal's for the gloves.

Most companions can be built in exactly the same way as you would build a main character of their class. As such you can't go wrong browsing the The Obsidian Boards' Build List and picking a build that tickles your fancy. It's true that some companions attribute spreads aren't as optimised for those builds as a player created character would be, but this is unlikely to stop the build from working, and PoE isn't hard enough to need super optimised character builds if you're using a party anyway (even on PotD). Your question is a bit broad for more specific advice than that (posting detailed builds and gearing advice for every companion would take me hours to do) but if you have specific companions you want advice on I could go into more detail. Honestly, you could probably build the companions fairly organically, picking talents, abilities and spells at each level which sound good to you, and you probably won't go far wrong (especially if you're playing on Hard or below). I did this in my first few play throughs and didn't have any real problems. The Beginner's Guide is also worth a read if you're fairly new to Pillars and aren't familiar with the mechanics of the game (or even if you're a veteran for that matter).

Another important difference is the existence of a GM. The GM can judge the flow of the game and the mood of the players and decide to ignore random encounter tables etc., making them less likely to annoy. A CRPG can't do this sadly.

@Raven Darkholme: well, a Chanter may be better than a Priest, but a Priest buffed Chanter is better than a Chanter unbuffed by a Priest. I suspect most people who feel that a Priest is a necessity are running full parties anyway, so have plenty of room for a Chanter as well. It's also possible that the power of a Chanter isn't immediately obvious when you glance through their abilities. In my first few play throughs I dropped Kana fairly early on as he didn't seem to perform particularly well (this was before Brisk Recitation and on Hard so he hardly ever got to cast Invocations) so never saw Dragon Thrashed in action. It wasn't until I read Boeroer's Drake's Ambassador build that I kept Kana in for longer and discovered the wonders of Dragon Thrashed.

Whilst it would almost certainly be a bit overpowered, I am tempted to mod a Citzal's Spirit Lance version of the Forgemaster's Gloves. Letting other classes have it would be great fun... okay it would probably be a LOT overpowered

Yeah, I doubt we'll see much more than little teases for a long time.

I mean, given their name, surely the only candidate is Grieving Mother

These snippets of information are cruel. I am hyped for a game I know nothing about, and more importantly is presumably at least a good year away, probably longer.

How important is difficulty to you? If it's not a major motivating factor I'd suggest going asap. If you want a challenge then it might be worth waiting till level 8 (or 9? I can't remember the exact level) and upscaling the content. Do note that whilst the more mundane encounters will be fairly easy at level 7, there are still plenty of challenging ones so it should still be fun. Hopefully you'll like the items in the White March then. They tend to be a bit more creative in what they do rather than the rather mundane examples in vanilla. Also Soulbound items are great fun (though sadly not usually as good as normal items, but the game is easy enough that you can use them if you like em). There aren't any more materials to make Superb items, but you get a similar one off material that allows you to make an item Legendary (the next tier up). Also it's worth noting that you'll find a fair few items in vanilla and WM which start off with Superb so you needn't worry too much about the limited nature of the materials in question. The upgrade given by the forge doesn't take any enchanting slots, it's an extra. Unfortunately Soulbound items can't get it, which is the biggest reason they tend to under perform compared to normal items. There is a limit to the materials needed to use the forge however. If you're not bothered by spoilers then it might be a good idea to look up the locations as there are a few you can miss. It's not necessary to get them all however so don't worry if you do miss them.

As far as I know you don't need to start a new game no. You can take an existing party through the White March and White March 2 content. That said, I've never done it myself so there may be minor bugs associated with doing so (pure speculation) but I am fairly certain there won't be anything major stopping you. As for how it works, basically after completing Act I (specifically after going through the Temple of Woedica in in Defiance Bay) you'll receive an alert that the Throne at Caed Nua has some messages for you. One of them is from Stalwart, the main town in the White March expansion, and after receiving it you unlock the ability to travel to the White March (the other is for the Siege of Crägholdt which is a high level area). The White March 2 unlocks immediately after resting outside of the White March after you complete the main quest of the White March 1. As for when you should do it, that's actually quite flexible as when you first travel to the White March you have the option of level scaling it (if you're above level 8 I think). A rough guideline is this: White March with a party at level 5 will be fairly tough, getting easier the closer you get to 8; if you level scale it it'll become difficult again past level 8 and get easier as you go higher. One thing to note however is that the White March has, in my opinion, much harder encounters than vanilla PoE, so even if you're a bit over levelled you might still find the tougher encounters challenging. The White March is more like Tales of the Sword Coast than Throne of Bhaal i.e. the content is included in the main game. My advice would be to treat White March 1 as challenging Act II equivalent or easier Act III equivalent, and White March 2 as challenging Act III equivalent. This is a rough guideline and you should be willing to leave and come back if you find parts of the expansions too difficult. You're not bound to the area when you enter it, so you can freely travel backwards and forwards between the White March and the Dyrwood. I hope my own convoluted reply wasn't confusing EDIT: oh, one more thing: I thoroughly recommend getting both expansions if you can afford them. I'd say, overall, they are better than the vanilla late game content and have some really cool lore stuff in them. Also, if you're an item junky like me, the items in them are far more interesting than in vanilla PoE.

It's the uncalled for part than annoys me, and "annoys" is the operative word as, like you say, it doesn't make any real difference to most play throughs. Also it turns out to be fairly easy to reverse using the UABE.