gkathellar

I'd contend that things like a generic "speed" enchantment should not define unique items. Unique items should have genuinely unique abilities.

I agree, but there's also questions of complexity creep. It's easy to give melee tons of abilities in something like DA. For your PoEs, though, it can add a ton of micro. That is what it is.

Well, you are level 13, and the final boss was originally supposed to be doable at level 10 or so. That's a pretty big factor.

It bears remembering that this forum is not a representative sample. Any poll here wouldn't necessarily reflect the broad swath of players. Not even the KS can be used to do general polls like that anymore, since the game has been generally available for so long.

Such talent would be taken as often as Field Triage or Wound Binding. Or even less often as HP healing has a chance to be useful in combat (it's possible to loose all Health in a single fight if you heal enough). Per-encounter spells have no effect on fights that matter. I don't know how many people take Field Triage or Wound Binding, but i never do. And i rarely rest on PotD. Yeah, pretty much. People keep bringing up Slicken spam as some kind of wonderful scapegoat, but in most fights a single casting of Slicken will shift things far enough in your favor that anything else is just gravy. Personally, the spell I spam once the per-encounters roll around is Ghost Blades, because it requires no thought and is totally routine - like many, many of the fights in PoE. The only thing per-encounter spells really do is minimize the energy needed to deal with the game's overabundant trash mobs. If Obsidian wants to get rid of per-encounter spells, they should also deal with the problem that per-encounter spells address. But right now, it seems like they're taking the Paizo approach: keep the problem, remove the convenience, and make casters stronger because it's a rules update and that's what rules updates are for. These aren't new, bonus talent points we're talking about. The proposal in question involves stripping out the convenience characters have at present, and asking players who want said convenience to spend an already limited resource on it. That's why hilfazer has the right of it - you'd be sacrificing your maximum strength, which you use in boss fights and other non-trivial encounters, for slightly easier trivial encounters. That's a trap option if I ever heard of one.

The main thing is that they start out with the minimum XP for their level, so you want to make them pretty much immediately after you hit level 2 or 3. Sooner is better, because an XP gap of 1,000-2,000 points becomes kinda inconsequential by later levels. The longer you wait, the larger the level gap becomes in terms of points spent.

It makes little difference. My own experience is that once the party hits level 5-7, it is rare that you run out of spells before melee hits red unless you run up against a boss fight or other major encounter. Per-encounter spells just ease things up so that you can play less efficiently. Caster power isn't meaningfully increased or decreased by their presence or absence, because you'll still have your full compliment of spells on the occasions where you actually need them.

I'm with you there, brother. (Especially the bitching, which is all I do here these days.)

Yeah, but they added the "rangers can dual wield" rule in 2E as a response to Drizzle's popularity. Prior to that it was, "drow can dual wield," which was at least less stupid.

So, hey, are the Bracers of Spiritual Power still broken? Because I recall reading that they were, but I don't think I've ever seen that addressed in any patch notes, ever.

The Gloves of Mechanics is random loot. Meaning you can't get it in a normal game. It's entirely based on luck. In my 4 playthroughs only 1 of them did I happened upon a pair. So you shouldn't count on getting it. Luck nothing. You just need the right timing. Perhaps more crucially, there are only a few skill checks with ultra-high requirements. You simply have to use rest bonuses and/or whatever scrolls you can find when they're coming up.

If I remember correctly, once the ghosts ambush you they close all the doors so you couldn't escape and have to fight them while being surrounded on all sides. Even with Shadowing Beyond the idiotic pathfinding AI might just have his rogue run in circles. I don't ... think so? I know you can't area transition while in combat mode, which I'll grant is really stupid. But keeping the heat off of the rogue and using SB at the right moment should allow you to be hidden when the rest of the party goes down, allowing you to exit combat momentarily and run for dear life. It's possible I'm off base. But yeah, Iron Man is hard. Don't do it if you can't deal with failing.

I know it's an established genre convention at this point, but I still find the idea of a wilderness expert using paired weapons baffling and incoherent, and I curse RA Salvatore's name every time someone raises the notion.

Your main issue is going to be the lack of scaling on both Ancient Memory and Constant Recovery. They both just fall pretty far behind after a while. But Moon Godlike is sweet, so that'll help.

Let me get this straight. Your main was a level 6 rogue, you were playing Iron Man, and you got ambushed by Shades and Phantoms - which you'd encountered in Caed Nua, so you knew exactly how much face they could wreck. Why exactly didn't you GTFO with Shadowing Beyond when you had the chance?

@Silent Winter - I take your point; certainly assuming an American audience is a result of my own biases, and I appreciate the reminder.

Dragons are rare. They can change sexes I think Incase they run into another Dragon of the same sex they aren't SOL and cant continue their line. One can sex change. There are no shortage of species that do this, although IIRC no mammals, birds, or modern reptiles due to complexity constraints. Simple organisms may also have a multitude of sexes, for pretty much the same reason. Given the size and age of fully-grown dragons, hermaphroditism would probably be more plausible, but sex-changing is a perfectly fair explanation. Plenty of straight cisgender white males are victimized by society. Unless a person is one of the rich, they are being victimized by society (and going by studies of how wealth and happiness interact, there's a case to be made that even they ain't doing so well). By absolutely no means is everyone is oppressed equally, but everyone is oppressed - and virtually everyone has a hand in continuing the cycle of oppression.

Stormcaller is for rangers, ciphers, and (bafflingly) chanters.

@AC - In-universe, LaSpeakeasi's got it. She can use some of her powers voluntarily, but some are involuntary. From a meta perspective, Avellone originally intended her to have a shared past with Durance. IIRC, she would have somehow attempted to use her powers on him, and the both of them were to have been "burned" in the process. This was cut, along with the mental mazes Avellone wanted to build into their quests. That's a given, I think. GM implies that her glamour is not something she can willingly suppress - it may even be a natural talent. (My headcanon is that she's the reincarnation of Eothas.) That's actually brilliant and I really like the idea, though LaSpeakeasi is right -- she's probably too old for that to be the case. It's still a fascinating idea, though. I always liked Eothas and am hoping for more story based around him. I just sort of assume that even her appearance and physical body are just a form the Watcher can perceive comfortably. The Watcher sees a Grieving Mother because as a god of rebirth in a place where rebirth has been broken, that's kinda what she is. (Again: headcanon.)

Wait...that doesn't happen to you all in real life? I must be doing it wrong *thinks about implications* That's ... disquieting.

The counter-charm is very cool, but it was in the IE games, so Obsidian can't exactly take credit for the idea. Making charm and dominate otherwise undispellable, though? All theirs. /stillbitter

Fighters, monks, chanters, and paladins are the really low-maintenance tanks. Ranger companions aren't exactly tough, but they can hold down an enemy or two when it comes to that. Wizard can tank like a beast, but it takes a ton of micro, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're up to that. As for healing, nothing beats a priest. The class has really phenomenal utility once its level 2 spells start to come in. Paladin and druid do have access to some healing, though, and you can certainly get through the game without a priest. Chanter's Ancient Memory looks like healing and quacks like healing, but it's not worth a damn (and isn't anybody's mother). Moon Godlike, on the other hand, is a great source of passive staying power in any party - especially in an off-tank role, where it should take damage at just the right pace to trigger its AoE heal when you need it most.

There are party area-transition dialogues that reference pets, so they could at least have a few of those.

IIRC, quality bonuses to accuracy are also bugged at present so that they don't show on the character sheet. Basically, there are a lot of things. That could cause this. If you're up to it, you can try counting up the modifiers that should be in play, and see if there's a bug. A ranger's base accuracy, before anything else, is 30+(level-1).

... have you seen the internet? It sure is well-documented for a myth.