JerekKruger

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.

Agreed. They were lifted straight from tabletop, where they were a tool available to the GM to stop players from unrealistically resting after every fight. Given that in CRPGs fights are much more prevalent and save/load scumming is available they're just an annoying carryover from the games tabletop roots (and before anyone complains, I am a tabletop role-player, but ultimately single player CRPGs as a medium are different to tabletop and short of genuine AI they always will be). People did that? In BG2 I was always overflowing with money and the random loot dropped by such encounters paled when compared to unique loot found by actually questing. Moreover the amount of time needed to level this way would surely make it less efficient than simply playing the game. Most on-rest encounters were pretty trivial and therefore low xp.

Oh I forgot to add, if you don't mind minor spoilers, this link: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73599-looted-grimoire-spell-lists/ is very handy to have when planning which spells to take. I wouldn't plan miles ahead, but knowing which spells are going to be available to learn from dropped Grimoires for the first few levels is handy.

I think he pulls the group with a ranged attack, then backs off to cast Savage Defiance and Frenzy and drink some potions. Of course, once he's done that he pretty much three shots the group with Dragon Leap, Heart of Fury and Barbaric Blow, so I'd agree that it's basically a straight up fight without any tricks. That video definitely puts pay to anyone still saying Barbarians are underpowered though doesn't it.

Amplified Wave is AoE and targets an Ally so if I understand correctly it wouldn't be affected even if it were below level 5. How moddable is PoE? I ask because there were unofficial BG2 fix patches a long time after support for BG2 stopped, so perhaps we can hope for the same with PoE.

Whilst I agree that the game becomes rather easy after level 8 or so on hard mode or lower, I'll say that the same only really applies to PotD if the player has a good grasp of the game mechanics. I suspect that a player on their first play through will still find later game content on PotD challenging. Moreover I'd say that the hardest fights this game has remain hard on PotD without a very good grasp of the game mechanics. As for attributes, you certainly can min-max if you want to, especially once you get a party member or two to tank for you, but it's in no way required. With a party, the game is beatable on PotD even with non-optimised characters (in fact once you get a good handle on the mechanics you might want to avoid over optimising as it'll make the game too easy). Anyway, specifics: as AeonsLegend says, Might and Intellect are your primary stats for a Wizard. After that I'd probably rate Perception followed by Dexterity as the next two important: Perception increases Accuracy of spells, which increases the chance that the spell will hit and, more importantly for debuffs, that it will crit; Dexterity will increase the speed at which you cast your spell, and would be more important if it weren't for the fact that at level 5 you get a spell called Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (DAoM for short) which gives you a heft +50% speed boost making Dexterity less important. At the bottom of the pile come Resolve and Constitution. Resolve will increase your Concentration, making it less likely you'll get interrupted, but if you're a ranged caster you should be aiming not to be hit that often, and the first level spell Spirit Shield gives you the equivalent of 10 Resolve points worth of Concentration. Constitution increases your Health/Endurance pool, but since Wizards have a very low Health/Endurance pool and since Constitution acts as a % modifier, the bonus or penalty for raising or lowering it isn't that important. If I were building a Death Godlike Wizard I'd probably go with something like this: Mig 18 Con 8 Dex 10 Per 15 Int 19 Res 8 But I'm not a fan of reducing any attribute below 8 for arbitrary role-play reasons. If you want to absolutely min-max then the following will probably result in the highest damage (requires Living Lands background): Mig 19 Con 3 Dex 16 Per 18 Int 19 Res 3 But be warned, you will be very squishy.

Agreed, I would have preferred the game without them, especially given how generic they were. That tends to be my view as well. They'll be an annoyance after a while and most players will get into the habit of saving and reloading to avoid them, wasting time and leading to frustration the few times a player forgets. Sure, perhaps it's more realistic to have camping be risky, but there are an awful lot of other realistic features that we don't include because they're not fun. Of course, if there's a simple option to turn them off I don't really mind them being included. Now, having a quest initiated by such an event is a different matter, and could be quite fun. The problem is when they become routine and purposeless.

Yeah that was a shame. I mean, technically you are only wielding a single one-handed weapon so it doesn't seem unreasonable to allow it to stack with weapon and shield style, and if anyone complains that it's more powerful than dual wielding style or two-handed style I'd point out that it also costs twice as many talent points. Still, I guess Obsidian wanted it to be strictly one single handed weapon and nothing else so fair enough.