JerekKruger

As far as I recall you can't change the order of your Paladin through a respec, but I am not 100% certain of that. All Paladins can work well as a tank. In fact Paladins are arguably the best tanks in the game. You can go sword and shield or two-handed quite happily. Sword and shield will be tankier whereas two-handed will be a bit more damaging. Before level 13 your main source of damage will be your weapon, either via Flames of Devotion or your normal auto-attack, therefore you'll do more damage using a two-handed weapon. Once you reach level 13, you get an ability called Sacred Immolation which allows your Paladin to do fire damage to all nearby enemies (take this) and the weapon you're using starts to matter a lot less for damage.

Unlike the other playable Paladin orders, the Kind Wayfarers don't have a centralised structure and are less like the traditional image of a knightly order. As I understand it, Kind Wayfarers tend to operate alone, or in small groups, and go wherever their skills are required i.e. wherever there travellers in need of protection etc. As such, I think any culture and background could fit a Kind Wayfarer Paladin, but perhaps one with the Explorer background from a more wild culture (Living Lands, Deadfire Archipelago etc.) would fit particularly well. If you plan to have another tank in your party then you can afford to keep Resolve at 10 since Paladin's have good base Deflection. I ran a Paladin with the following stats Mig 18 Con 10 Dex 10 Per 15 Int 15 Res 10 who primarily used a two-handed sword and acted as a secondary tank, damage dealer and buffer, so I'm sure 16/10/10/16/16/10 would work fine too.

Agreed! I'd much prefer a weaker per encounter ability than a stronger per rest since so often per rest abilities never get used by me.

Oh apparently I can't read. This is really interesting. I already thought that a Citzal's Wizard was pretty interesting, but this adds some extra tricks.

Is there an item that gives Clear Out?

How are Monks less active than Fighters or Barbarians? In my experience they use roughly the same number of abilities in shorter fights, but a lot more in long fighters. I'd actually put them at the top of non-caster classes for the number of abilities you're using.

One thing to note is that the OP plans to play on normal, so neither class is at all essential. Out of interest what makes a Chanter so essential in your view? I really like them but I've never had the feeling that they are essential.

I don't think that's what active means in the context of the original post "multiple spells / abilities". I mean, it's possible that the OP is happy with multiple passive abilities and the occasional spell, but my instinct is he meant multiple active spells/abilities.

Oh I totally agree, I just wanted to make sure he was aware that a Chanter won't fit the requirement he gave. If he's okay with that then I whole heatedly endorse a Chanter too.

Given the above, a Chanter seems a poor pick. The majority of what Chanters do is entirely passive: chanting, Ancient Memory, auto-attacking. Their only active abilities are their Invocations and, whilst those are good, bear in mind that on normal difficulty you're unlikely to build enough Phrases to cast more than one Invocation, and there'll be quite a lot of fights where you don't even get to do that. This isn't to say that Chanters are bad. They're a very good class and Kana almost always has a place in my main line up for this reason. I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that they don't fit your desire for an active class. Now I'd say that the classes which best fit your description (active supporters) are probably the Priest and, to a lesser extent, the Paladin. Cipher's are very active, but they're more focuses on damage dealing and controlling/debuffing enemies than supporting friends (although they do have arguably the single best party buff in the game). Monks are possibly my favourite class and are very active in battle, but once again they are not really a support class.

Huh, good catch. I wonder where the 4 comes from though (the +3 seems to come from Playername/Eder).

I think, though I might be wrong, that your ability to detect hidden objects improves when in stealth mode.

Ah okay. Yeah, don't jump down the pit. It is not wise.

Huh, I'm surprised you managed to do the ogre level if you struggled with the drake. I suspect with a few more tries you'd have been able to beat him.

That's basically the reason I'd prefer to see a new character rather than the return of the Watcher. I don't really want a game where standard encounters have to include dragons and liches to simply remain challenging if, for no other reason, it makes such enemies seem mundane and makes the adventures of PoE seem so also (which given what the Watcher actually does in PoE is kinda weird). This on the other hand I am all for. I had the idea that the PC might have a fragment of Eothas's soul in theirs, but the Watcher also works well. I am also all for the return of companions, be it as companions again or simply as NPCs the player meets in game like some BG companions did in BG2. I'd really love to get a second chance to take in Devil in my party with a, hopefully, improved Rogue class.

Well Ilfan Byrngar's Solace is perfectly good and is available fairly early (floors 1 and 2 of Endless Paths are fairly easy, 3 is tough, 4 is probably easier than 3 but with a few really annoying enemies, and 5 is, in my opinion, easier than 3 and 5, so depending on your patience for reloading you could get it very early). As for Badgradr's Baricade, it's in WM1 which, depending on your path through the game, isn't that late at all. I usually have loads of content left after completing WM1. I can understand not liking the look of small shields for your particular character by the way. They look for for duelist type characters but not so much for more classic medieval type fighters.

There are good shields in all categories. Is it just their looks you don't like?

Well there's the question about whether class limiting soulbounds should have happened at all, but given it did I suppose you could argue that Dragon's Maw is kind of barbaric. I mean it's a dragon's face on a shield which apparently bits it's enemies and breaths fire.

Oh right, you were considering the Larder Door. Yeah, it sucks. Not only because of the accuracy penalty of large shields but also because, counter intuitively, bashing shields actually reduce your DPS compared to using a one-hander with a non-bashing shield (Badgradr and Dragon Maw are different because they have useful on hit effects).

I'm not asking for every random encounter to lead to an epic quest culminating in a fight against a dragon. They could be as simple as filling in the of lore or fleshing out NPCs. There are countless things that happen which aren't mentioned in good narratives because they're mundane and uninteresting. Imagine if Lord of the Rings had descriptions of how the Fellowship easily fought off a group of roaming Orcs again and again: it would detract from the story. Why would doing the opposite be a good thing in a CRPG. There are plenty of non-tedious methods for reminding the player that travelling in the wilderness is dangerous.

I can't remember exactly, but you're likely to find a scroll of + mechanics and together with an appropriate resting bonus you should be able to get +4/+5ish. Also, if you're not totally against the idea, you can always create a mercenary Rogue with maxed out mechanics to get it super early.

I wouldn't use Whispers of Yenwood outside of actual fights against spirits. To be honest you can quite happily go with a generic weapon until you either kill Raedric (he has Justice) or reach Defiance Bay (where it should be easy to pick up a fine greatsword). Once you hit Defiance Bay, do the Cinders of Faith quest when you're strong enough (I think I did it around level 6 on PotD with a full party) to get Tidefall. Tidefall is quite good enough to use till you finish the game, it's one of the best weapons in the game, and you can use that till you get Ydwen's. For ranged attacks: use whatever until you reach Kana, use Kana's arquebus until you get something better. Don't forget arbalests are also Weapon Focus: Soldier so if you find a fine arbalest before you find a fine arquebus then do use that.

Perhaps radiant spores are really good for you health?

I disagree. Your ability to attack effectively is heavily influenced by your ability to defend. In this video (stuff on shields starts around 4:30 but the whole video is well worth a watch) Roland Warzecha explains his theory on how shields were used in Viking era hand-to-hand combat (specifically more skirmish/duel fighting than formation fighting, which fits something like PoE better) and how important they are. If you know how to use a shield of that sort of size (PoE medium shield) properly, then your offensive ability isn't going to be hindered. If anything, I'd say realistically your offensive ability will be improved when using a small or medium shield. It's a shame that, apart from Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade, using a bashing shield will generally reduce rather than improve a characters damage output when compared to using a non-bashing shield.

This, a thousand times this. If there's a quest which starts after a random chance encounter* that's great. Having a bunch of Hobgoblins spawn with a 10% when I sleep, forcing me to either waste time reloading, or waste time auto-attacking them to death, that doesn't improve the game or the experience. *make sure the chance isn't too low and/or guarantee it after a certain number of failed chances.