JerekKruger

My guess: Soulwhip will no longer deactivate once you reach max focus (otherwise, as you say, the last part makes no sense). If I were designing this, I'd make it so that if you are at max focus for more than Xs, you receive a debuff which drains your focus rapidly for Ys.

Something I noticed: in the text of the update we are told that Nalpazca Monks have "increased Wound cap while under the effects of drugs", but in the actual video we're told that they "generate Wounds while receiving benefits from drugs". The latter sounds like a passive accumulation of Wounds whilst your Monk is drugged up which is, potentially, really good. Either way, the Nalpazca sounds a lot more interesting than it originally did, although it still doesn't tempt me as much as the other two Monk subclasses. EDIT: just noticed Max spotted this too. My bad

Yeah, we'll have to wait and see to know exactly how much of a penalty it is, it just feels like a big one. That's true. If it's a spell that you would cast anyway then it saves you a cast and the time it would take to cast. Not a bad ability. For non-tanky Wizards I suspect it'll be less good. Honestly recovery is probably as good as any other option. Obsidian just have to make sure they explain what it is and how modifiers affect it more clearly. Or your Athletics skill perhaps?

I find that unlikely. Both Swift Strikes and Flagellant's Path used Wounds in Pillars whereas Skyward Kick was per encounter. This is a good point. In which case I'd guess the red cross symbol is simply the "per encounter" symbol. It might even be a placeholder. Hmm... that is odd. My initial though was "Mortification is a new name for Wounds", but the subclass descriptions from earlier in the video still mention Wounds. I'm still inclined to think that Mortification = Wounds and the fact that both are mentioned is simply down to this being a work-in-progress. We don't know that they are freshly created. The character creation jumps several steps and clearly this character has been levelled several times (what with being a high level Monk/Wizard). Also it could simply be that for testing/demonstration purposes it's useful to change the way wounds work, so that you don't have to spend time being hit to use your abilities. That's the main reason I suspect that the first category are Wound abilities and the second are per encounter. I might be wrong of course.

That's currently my plan too, although I could see having both a Wizard and a Fighter/Wizard say, since I'll get my max level spells from the pure Wizard anyway.

A few things I noticed whilst rewatching the update more carefully: Flagellants Path now does Burning damage rather than Crushing. At 2:07, when we see the Monk's abilities, Skyward Kick is next to what I assume is the Empower symbol, and is therefore a per encounter ability rather than an ability requiring wounds. This means that, at the moment, Stunning Blow is being changed to an ability requiring wounds making it a lot better than in Pillars. There's no sign of the Feign Death icon on the Rogue's ability tree, which for me is great as having one of the Rogue's highest level powers be the ability to pretend to be dead (regardless of how powerful it might have been) was disappointing. A third level of Wildstrike for Druids will no doubt be welcome.

The extra bonuses that specialist Wizards get nice* but I'm still not sure whether they are worth losing access to two other schools. I wonder why Obsidian went with removing access to two schools rather than AD&D's one school. * The Evoker's and Illusionist's look to be the best, the Conjurer's could be very good depending on how good their familiars are, the Enchanter's needs to be able to clear more than just Hobble to be worth it in my opinion and as cool as the Tramsuter's sounds I suspect it won't be great. Delay is the best I can come up with, though it's still not great.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that this was just to keep things simple in the video and that you will be able to choose each class ability. If not I suspect Obsidian will come under pressure to make it that way after the Beta hits.

My only concern with the Shattered Pillar is that they have a lower maximum wound cap, and that might mean there are Monk abilities they can't use. Hopefully this isn't the case, and instead they simply get less from abilities like Turning Wheel due to not being able to stack as many wounds. Otherwise I have to say the Shattered Pillar looks like my Monk of choice.

Well your Accuracy should be 30 and Xaurips have 38 Deflection so you should have a 42% chance to Hit, a 35% chance to Graze and a 23% chance to Miss. Where are you getting the 19% from?

What class?

What level are you and which Xaurips? If I recall correctly there are some Xaurip Champions around Madhar Bridge, and there are plenty of them down on the Xaurip level of the Endless Paths, and those are going to be tough early on.

Indeed, so in particular avoid giving it the Exceptional enchantment since you can add that yourself.

Looks pretty good to me. It's certainly less flexible but I suspect it'll end up working better. The UI they showed looked great, and it looks like there are more abilities that build on themselves which is cool.

You should sell as much as possible to Heodan at the start of the game, he gives the best prices. Gaun's Pledge alone sells for around 1000 to him.

As Max said, several of your characters can solo PotD. You might go faster/have an easier time if you go with a different setup but this one isn't going to struggle.

Heh sorry, was just joking. I suspect no one has directly answered your question because the answer is "yes, definitely!" In the hands of an decent player this group will not only handle PotD, it'll destroy it. This isn't to say you'll find PotD easy yourself, since it'll be your first try, but generally speaking using a full custom party with well built characters make PotD fairly easy. That's the reason I restrict myself to the in game companions, and why a lot of the better players here run solo, or at least use fewer than the full compliment of companions.

Apparently there were, but then Tolkien later retconned them to be the same person. The fact that the earlier one was killed was explained away by him being reembodied. Man, he can't have been much good if Legolas replaced him

My only comment is that half of your characters weren't part of the Fellowship, and one died long before the Fellowship even formed

Heh, to be honest even if it remains bad I don't mind it returning. I'm just hoping Obsidian do something with Bash to make it worthwhile sometimes.

I delete old saves because I don't like clutter, so currently I have no save games to import. But beyond that people might want to try out different starting game states, and having to play Pillars each time is asking a little much.

Well there was mention of a few preset options as well as the option of customising your own, so I hope those presets are the newbie friendly option and the custom option is more detailed.

Not quite true. At zero recovery all further speed bonuses magically become useless

Only if Obsidian fix bashing so that the Larder Door isn't objectively worse than a normal large shield.

And as a bonus the lance looks great. These things are important.