gkathellar

Oh good, you made another thread about it. OP understands that the best troll is the simplest troll - 7/10.

Priests get some great damage spells later on, but their early levels are painfully devoid of such, yeah.

No surprise there. Stronghold mechanics are garbage, man.

It used to. Then Sensuki demonstrated how you could break the game with pikes if it did. Every time a debate involving, "do this with disengagement, that'll fix it," starts, and people go back and forth listing the million-and-one reasons why the other guy's fix won't work but their fix is fine, it only serves to reinforce the point: engagement is a bad system. Not a system that needs to be implemented differently or fixed - because that's been tried and tried and tried and tried - but a bad system. (It doesn't help that kiting is still totally possible in game, and is arguably far worse than it ever was in BG.)

Also nobody knowing she exists might pose a problem.

There's no particular impact for such, since you might not have the dungeon at that point. They ask for mercy and you go, "Too late!" and then you kill 'em.

Fists don't lack for accuracy and damage. The real issue is that you can't get properties like Draining on them.

Having a second cipher in the party is by no means a wasted slot, and I personally like GM, so I vote for her. Moar Avellone for the win. I see what you did there.

I still don't understand why we want to discourage movement at all. I've been slowly replaying BGTutu over the past couple of weeks, and movement ends up being one of the more dynamic and interesting parts of combat (and the loss of movement or control of movement is a huge risk). Engagement strikes me as ever more pointless.

hugin7 and peddroelm, you are gentlemen and scholars both. Thank you for the research.

Is there any reason to use Darksee over Lillith's Shawl?

A sufficiently minmaxed wild orlan paladin can beat the dragon.

Sounds like a bug to me. It's clearly BS. You should probably report it in Tech Support. But then, Xaurip Champions get something like 5 castings of Lay Hands per encounter, so who really knows? What, me, bitter?

Two-weapon style is the only one that applies to unarmed, IIRC (unless you use a shield and bare hand, like CAPTAIN AMERICA).

Ciphers are always a lot of fun.

Didn't say it was a *reason*. Although if you want to go that direction, saying "I personally want to be able to create an awesome tank who can also do awesome damage, because I don't like middle-ground, and this game doesn't let me do what I want" isn't a reason, either. You're misstating the nature of the objection. It's more, "I would like to be able to create a middle-ground character whose overall effectiveness is roughly equal to that of a specialized character."

I have issues with the larger redesign which I don't have the time to get into, but I just want to say - I really like the idea of coupling Duration with a stat like Constitution.

The world in the isometric projection is indeed diamond-shaped. North must coincide with either the top-right side of the diamond or the top-left side of the diamond. At the moment, the game is giving somewhat controversial directions in this regard: for example, the North Ward in the Brackenbury Sanitarium is located in the top-right corner of the map. The dragon in the "Parable of Wael" quest is facing in the same direction, and it's described as east there. Eastern Barbican in the stronghold faces bottom-right, but Western Barbican faces bottom-left, which should be south if we go by the neighbouring barbican. Hope this clears the question up. The North Ward in the Brackenbury Sanitarium is the ward which is roughly north relative to the other wards. Caed Nua has two barbicans. One is more to the east, and one is more to the west. As a result, they are named the East Barbican, and the West Barbican. Place names should not be read as map directions, in real life or in video games.

I'm not sure why wearing cloth makes for better roleplaying, since this is a monk.

Uh ... that's not really how north works. Unless the world is flat. And diamond-shaped. It's neither of those things.

There was a thread earlier on this board where someone was testing by doing exactly that. If you're really curious, look it up, see if you can get in touch with the guy.

You have a talent called cautious attacker or somesuch which gives +10 deflection and -20% speed. It's modal like wary defender, then you can grab superior deflection for extra +5. Won't help with Fort/Ref/Will though. Or you could bring a chanter singing a defensive chant all day long....or you could take a paladin with shielding flames for a +10 deflection for short periods. There are myriad ways to keep your Deflection up. Paladin is actually the best tank in the game in the respect to get highest Deflection, Fort/Ref/Will if you have him/her as your PC. With right dialogue choices you and one talent you can get a +13def and 26 to Fort/Ref/Will 13/27/27/27, actually. It bears noting that for a fighter who doesn't dump Int, Vigorous Defense + Wary Defender will raise your defenses above what a paladin can get with F&C + Cautious Attack. Paladin wins out in longer fights, which means it becomes hands-down better for solo play once it hits its stride. In party play, where fights rarely last the full duration of Vigorous Defense, a fighter has the edge. Thats not true the paladins deflection is higher, his other defenses are waaaay higher than the fighters. edit: Vigorous Defense doesn't matter it only lasts 20 seconds, there are plenty of fights longer than that even in a group. If you sole pretty much every fight lasts longer. ... yes, that's exactly what I wrote.

You have a talent called cautious attacker or somesuch which gives +10 deflection and -20% speed. It's modal like wary defender, then you can grab superior deflection for extra +5. Won't help with Fort/Ref/Will though. Or you could bring a chanter singing a defensive chant all day long....or you could take a paladin with shielding flames for a +10 deflection for short periods. There are myriad ways to keep your Deflection up. Paladin is actually the best tank in the game in the respect to get highest Deflection, Fort/Ref/Will if you have him/her as your PC. With right dialogue choices you and one talent you can get a +13def and 26 to Fort/Ref/Will 13/27/27/27, actually. It bears noting that for a fighter who doesn't dump Int, Vigorous Defense + Wary Defender will raise your defenses above what a paladin can get with F&C + Cautious Attack. Paladin wins out in longer fights, which means it becomes hands-down better for solo play once it hits its stride. In party play, where fights rarely last the full duration of Vigorous Defense, a fighter has the edge.

Yes, it's viable on Hard. You won't get nearly so much mileage out of attacking as a rogue would, but at the very least it'll give you something to do when you're not casting spells.

Point the first: not all attacks target deflection. If you are right in the center of the field, those attacks will target you. Point the second: With 100 Deflection (and yes, I am aware that it can get much higher, I'm using the baseline you set down), a generic Xaurip grazes you 15% of the time (25% in PotD). A xaurip. I am not saying off-tanks don't work. I'm sure they can even be made to work in cloth. But you don't get nearly as much offense back out as you sacrifice in defense. It's suboptimal. Do you need to be perfectly optimized to complete the game? No (and if that's all you care about, more power to you). But the difference between an optimized build and a non-optimized build is way, way bigger than I think is desirable - especially since the optimal builds for many classes are really, really boring.