JerekKruger

Fantasy settings that explain all their incongruences away with "magic" tend to be terrible fantasy settings.

Agreed! I couldn't quite describe why I didn't like the ship (boat?) but what you describe about it being too rectagular and the aft castle being far too large for it is spot on. It just doesn't look sleek or fast as a result. I think perhaps the mistake that Obsidian made was trying to include a windowed cabin a bit like larger ships from the age of sail had, but to avoid this cabin being tardis-like in its dimensions they had to make the aft castle far too big.

I was just about to say caravel. I can think of several types of ship appropriate to the equivalent historical era, but it kinda depends on what sort of size limit Obsidian have in mind.

Every character, regardless of class, starts with a base of 20 in each of the non-deflection stats, and gains +3 every level, so at level 16 they have a base of 65 in each. Deflection varies with class, with the Fighter starting with 30, Chanters and Monks with 25, and every other class with 20 or less. In particular, Paladins start with 20. Deflection gains +3 with every level like other defences, so again at level 16 a Paladin would have a base of 65 Deflection (a Fighter would have 75). However Paladins have a special ability called Faith and Conviction that automatically activates when combat starts. This gives them a bonuses to all defences dependent on their reputations. With 3 or higher in both of their favoured reputations and no points in their disfavoured ones this talent gives +11 Deflection and +22 to all other saves, giving Paladins an effective base of 76 Deflection and 85 in all other defences. This is the reason Paladins are considered to have the highest potential defences. As far as I recall, all other bonuses to defences are available to all classes and hence can be taken by a Paladin, so they can maintain their lead on other classes if they wish. Onto more specifics of how to build a super defensive Paladin: focus your attributes on Might and Intellect, followed by Resolve. Dexterity should be your dump stat (if any), keep Perception at 10 and Constitution no lower than 8. This gives you high Fortitude (the most important defence) and Will defences. You will then take Weapon and Shield Style and use a shield to raise your Deflection and Reflex saves even more. You definitely want to use the Outworn Buckler for an effective +5 to all saves as well. This will probably raise all your defences to around 105ish at level 16. Beyond this point you could take some or all of the defence boosting talents, but honestly doing so is probably overkill. With gear and spell buffs you'll already be at the point where you can tank every encounter in the game so you really don't need all of them. Perhaps the Fortitude one is worth taking, as is perhaps one of the situational ones that add +20 to specific types of attacks.

More of a shame were the terrible looking helms with good stats in my opinion.

For gods sake! I've never said that tank, healer dps etc. don't exist: I said the idea that your list of six archetypes are some sort of universal standard that everyone follows is rubbish. It would be stupid to claim that "dps" doesn't exist since it's simply a descriptive term. It's that you try to argue that you have to have a tank, a semi-tank, a melee dps, a healer, a ranged dps and a ranged cc that I have a problem with. And no, obviously not. Builds aren't divided into amazing and rubbish, there's a whole spectrum in between. A randomly selected Rogue build will (probably) fall in the rubbish end of the spectrum and, since Rogues are easily the weakest class in the game right now your party will have a hard time finishing hard mode without any deaths. It won't have a hard time beating hard mode at all though, unless you insist on killing all dragons etc. Rubbish. Well I imagine writing a fully fleshed out companion is much more time consuming that adding in some of this other content, but honestly I suspect they've placed her at 5 million as a tool to encourage backing. Remember that they've said that they'll allow funds raised after the campaign ends to count towards her stretch goal so I'm guessing they're hoping they'll reach that over the next few months.

It really didn't though. Fighters might have been intended to be able to soak more damage than other classes, but they were also designed to be capable of putting out damage. Tanks are, by very design, meant to sacrifice offensive capabilities in exchange for extremely good survivability and, more crucially, tools that allow them to protect their party. In fact, if you actually look into the origins of the term tank it does precede MMOs, appearing first in MUDs*. I'd argue that it's a fundamentally CRPG term since it relies heavily on manipulating AI targeting rules to ensure that most enemies attack the tank whilst the rest of the party focuses on killing the enemies. This simply doesn't work in tabletop games where the GM can decide on behalf of the enemies who they will attack, and isn't bound by some artifical targeting rules. *Unless you can provide me with a quote that refers to AD&D Fighters as "acting in the role of tank" of course.

I mean, it's sort of like that. It's certainly true that if you touch it correctly it discharges energetic projectiles. That's assuming it's already primed. Sometimes it needs a blow. And you gotta make sure the ramrod gets in nice and deep. Ow!

Fulvano pls.

I mean, it's sort of like that. It's certainly true that if you touch it correctly it discharges energetic projectiles.

I believe so. Something about handling sub-maps differently I think.

Maybe they're saving it for one of the stretch goals before 5 Million? I mean it's a no brainer to include.

All I really want is the opportunity to dance with the busty daughters of various colonial governors and, if I perform the dancing minigame well, to be rewarded with some useless piece of information.

Multiclassing to the rescue?

And Deadfire is being balanced towards five, so presumably you're in favour of five for Deadfire. That's a list of three. Your list was six long. Also no, these archetypes are not universal. They came to prominence with the rise of MMOs. Because hard more really isn't very hard. Once you understand all the mechanics of Pillars even PotD is pretty easy with a party. Casual is used to mean simplified, but it has negative undertones. When people say a game is casual they mean it's simplified in a bad way, and when they refer to other players as casuals it's obvious it's meant as a term of derision. That's why I don't like it. Heh, okay well I hope I gave you a chance to do so. I think it's partly because a lot of the companions in PoE were rather bland that Obsidian have decided to reduce the number in Deadfire. They want to make sure the ones they do have are deep and well written. Whether they manage remains to be seen I guess.

No, it was *very* definitely called an expansion. in fact, Obsidian was very upfront about their dislike of modern companies DLC habits during that process. My mistake. Still, I doubt the use of the term DLC signifies anything, but we'll see I guess.

Seconded. Great single target damage and it's still very robust.

And seven gives more options than six, and eight gives more options that seven, and so on. If you're going to argue specifically in favour of six you've got to explain why seven or more is worse. Your argument with regard to companion interactions does not do this. So why aren't you arguing in favour of eight? Your arbitrary list of roles isn't universal, and won't become so no matter how many times you repeat it. I really can't parse this sentence, other than the final part about things being generic because everyone is doing them. I agree that that's a fine use for the word generic, but it is not, in of itself, a criticism. It will only be hard if Obsidian don't also tweak encounters to take this into account. I don't have any reason to assume they won't though, do you? We don't know that it will be simpler, because we don't know what other changes Obsidian will be making. I play almost exclusively on PotD, I've never come across this list of roles that "everyone" knows about. Oh also, I spend almost all my time here on the Strategies and Character Builds subforum and haven't come across the list there either. Nerdcommando's builds are pretty bad: he's far too tied up in the idea of min-maxing attributes, but the way attributes work in PoE, together with the changes in patch 2.0, make this a suboptimal way to play PoE. Trust me, go use some of the builds Strategy subforum here and realise just how much better they are than any of his. A side benefit of not min-maxing attributes is that the enemy is much less likely to bypass your front line (this is due to how their targetting works), which in turn makes it much less necessary to have three frontliners. But no, your list of roles is not universal, and if you know what you're doing (rather than following Nercommando's bad advice) you absolutely don't need to follow it. We're talking about party size. If you bring up the chaos of Dragon Age's battlefield then you're implying that it's a result of the smaller party size (actually you said this outright). I am saying that there are many other differences between the two games that contribute to it's chaotic nature, and that therefore using it as an argument against smaller parties is flawed. Well we'll see I guess. All I can say is that with a higher level cap, and all spells and abilities becoming per encounter, I am guessing there will be more, not less, to do in combat even with smaller parties. Combine this with multiclassing and subclasses (giving a total of 1007 class combinations) and I am not at all worried about Deadfire becoming simplified (I refuse to use the term casual as it's such a stupid term).

Me too. My guess would be they simply used different wording by chance, not deliberately.

I doubt the difference is wording means anything.

I can't think of a game in the past five years (probably longer) that has called its extra content "expansions". DLC is just the term used for all additional content these days. The White March parts I and II were called DLC. What exactly Obsidian are planning I can't say (possibly neither can they yet), however I'd expect something similar to the White March i.e. a few fairly large DLCs.

Well, things have changed in the past seventeen years. One thing is that translation work has dried up due to machine translations and cheap translations done by teams in places like China and India. It's quite possible that Black Isle had more options, and those options were better. I don't know for certain, I'm just guessing here, although what I say about translation work having dried up is true (my dad used to do translations of technical manuals as an extra source of income, but eventually the company he got his work from closed down for the very reasons stated about).

This was already the case in PoE, it's just that all the companions were hidden away upstairs in Brighthollow, protected by two PoE loading screens, whilst the player could do everything they needed to in Caed Nua from anywhere outside.

It's not all bad, the Italian translation seems to get a lot of good press from Italian players. Unfortunately, Obsidian are somewhat at the mercy of what translators are available to them. In many cases they won't have native speakers on their staff to read over the translations to see if they are any good; even if they do those people are unlikely to have the time to do so; and even if they did it's likely to cost additional money to have the translators make changes.

I don't mind the steward returning, but I do hope out ship actually has a crew as well. Part of what makes a ship feel alive is the crew engaging in various naval activities like swabbing the main sail and hoisting the petard and other things like that...