JerekKruger

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.

It's hard to do completely passively, but you're in potions of Deleterious Alacrity of Motion or Outlander's Frenzy (out other speed buff abilities) and it becomes more feasible. Also zero recovery is very nice, but near zero recovery is good too.

Oh I know that burst is important of course, but Lampros was talking about the Paladin's superior overall damage. I just wanted to point out that barbs do very good overall damage. On the right circumstances Heart of Fury can be extremely bursty of course, though those circumstances aren't always present.

I think a Barbarian will write the floor with a Paladin when it comes to DPS. Early game they have carnage whereas the Paladin had no AoE, and when the Paladin gets Sacred Immolation the Barbarian gets Heart of Fury which assuming an encounter has enough enemies (which on PotD most do) will do stupid damage (see Kaylon's video where he two shots upscaled Magran's Faithful on PotD). Of course he's not so obviously a good tank and he doesn't provide party support in the way a Paladin does.

I think you overestimate Paladins and Chanters because of your dislike of micro. Wizards, Druids and Priests can all do absurdly high damage if you empty their spell books as fast as possible. Also, whilst Sacred Immolation is indeed a great damage dealing ability, Paladins aren't particularly great at single target damage dealing (Flames of Devotion is good but limited) and sometimes you simply need to focus an enemy down.

Agreed. I usually hate difficulties that rely on buffing enemies, but PotD doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as most other games that do it. It's hard for me to say for certain how your experience of PotD would be, as you have a very different style of play to me (I pause and micro all the time). Certainly buffing, debuffing and crowd control are going to be more useful in PotD than on other difficulties. That said, I think you're worrying about the difficulty more than you need to. Shields certainly aren't a necessity and I can't think of any builds that are good on normal/hard but not viable on PotD. I'd just jump in and try it out.

I just check the stats for Young Wolves and they have 46/58 Endurance on Hard/PotD respectively so yeah, it looks like they get +25% Endurance on PotD. Xaurips are armed with spears which do 11-16 damage which, when modified by their 7 Might is 10.01-14.56 so yeah, that's the same damage. It might be different for enemies that don't use standard weapons e.g. wolves.

There damage will be higher as a result of grazing less and critting more thanks to the increased Accuracy, and their health will seem higher due to you critting less and grazing more due to the increased Deflection, but as I understand it their damage and health aren't directly buffed. The big difference you'll find in PotD is you have to focus more on buffing Accuracy and debuffing enemy Defences than you do on lower difficulties. This makes the early game harder, since you have relatively few such tools, but it becomes more manageable by the mid-late game.

They get +15 Accuracy and +15 to all of their Defences. They might also have higher Endurance pools, though don't quote me on that fairly certain they don't actually, I think it's just Accuracy and Defences. By the why, whilst the Wiki is still far from perfect, it seems that someone(s) have been doing a lot of work improving it recently. It's nowhere near as incomplete as it was a few months ago.

Heh, sorry about the tangent. I agree that a lot of the time the text of a dialogue option doesn't match it's supposed disposition. Benevolent and Cruel tend to be fairly clear, but things like Clever, Rational and Stoic are often a little bizarre. Personally, if they have a similar system in Deadfire (and I quite like the system so I hope they do) I'd like to see every disposition paired off with an opposite and have each one be a scale. That way rather than having a character who's Honest 4 and Deceitful 1, you'd simply have a character who's Honest 3, and that would also give Paladins and Priests a bit more leeway and the ability to make up for past mistakes.

That's exactly it, although for non-damaging spells there's no difference between the two circles.

I am fairly certain that's the case yes. It's hard to tell when your characters are moving around and your Intellect bonus isn't all that high yet.

I just mean the additional AoE you get from having an Intellect higher than 10. For example with Intellect 10 a Fireball has a blast radius of 2.5m, so everyone within 2.5m of the target will be hit by it. If you have Intellect 20 the blast radius goes up by 60% to 4m* so it hits all enemies within 4m, however allies are still only hit if they are within 2.5m. That outer 1.5m radius is what I'm referring to when I said "Intellect AoE". Note that if you're not playing on expert mode and you use an AoE spell like Fireball then you'll see a template representing it's AoE, and (unless your Intellect is 10 or below) that template will be two colours. The outer colour represents the additional AoE gained from Intellect. *As a side note, the actual area of effect increases from 19.6m2 to 50.3m2, an increase of 156%, not 60%.

Doubtful. I think the power of Chanters isn't that well know, and it was even less so in the past.

A combination of the two is probably wisest. No, you just have to be a little more cautious in your AoE placing. Also unless I am wrong about Intellect AoE being Foe only (and I am fairly certain I'm not), higher Intellect characters actually have an easier time placing AoE spells without doing friendly fire.

It's actually kind of odd that they don't. For every phrase after the first you get your chant point as soon as you start it, but the first phrase doesn't give you a chant point at all.

I am fairly certain that any additional AoE you get from Intellect is Foe only AoE (i.e. the extra AoE won't hit your allies), hence you only have to learn the base AoEs for each spell well enough to avoid any risk of friendly fire.

It's a fun challenge to do at level 5, but I'd agree that 6 or 7 is probably a more suitable time to go.

Yeah, sidekicks are simply companions with less personal content. I think Obsidian said they'd have about the same content as the less fleshed out companions in Pillars, whilst full companions would have a lot more. They'll also not be part of the relationships web that Deadfire is going to have.

I blame Josh for spending too little time Tweeting and Teasing and too much, presumably, working!

He said her concept art to be fair. That and the fact he's a new type of human (storm human) which suggests the possibility of new, unknown lands. Given the time frame that Pillars happens in, and the theme of Deadfire, the possibility for an expansion of future game to involve travelling to a newly discovered continent seems likely (and cool). Obviously both could be great depending on their writing, but I have similar feelings to you. It also doesn't help that I don't enjoy using crafted poisons in CRPGs (assuming that's something that's in the game and Bonteru specialises in).