gkathellar

@Oxford Guy That's a perfectly viable spread, but I'm honestly not sure there's a lot of point. You're gaining +6 will, -6 reflex and -2 fortitude, but while that's generally a net gain, I don't know that it matters on a fragile DPS character like this one. It also means losing out on dialogue options for extremely high perception and resolve, and gaining nothing in return. If you're taking Int, you may as well take it up to 13 or 14.

Yeah, I'm having the same issue. Seeing as how I pulled through by the skin of my teeth, it's kind of irritating. I'm trying to find out if there's a console workaround via Global variables, but no luck so far.

@Bester and/or Sensuki This might be a little off topic, but do either of you have a list of Global variables anywhere? (I've had a post-fight dialog fail to trigger, and I wanted to see if I could force it rather than do the fight again.)

I've been thinking - could the bash ability effectively merge the two-weapon style with sword and shield style? Could this actually be good, or is it really just a gimmick?

I'd advise you to use magical attacks that target defenses other than Deflection, and to use debuffs. If you have a Cipher, the ability to paralyze them helps a lot. Guns, too, if only because you only need to get lucky once. ... but really, the temple is just tough, and it'll kick your ass repeatedly.

Also, what differentiates your PC from the companions isn't supposed to be their superior stat spread - if it was, that would be a feature. What differentiates you from your companions is that you're the Watcher, and you get special abilities to that effect. Your companions are, in theory, the faithful allies whose skills and experience make victory possible. The fact that the Watcher could do significantly better by going to the inn and hiring a bunch of anonymous jerks is ... grating.

Wow ... I thought Aloth was pretty bad, but Grieving Mother is terrible. Ugh. So, let me pose a hypothetical to people in the thread: say you could shift around the attributes for each companion, but couldn't actually change what the numbers were (so, for instance, you could move Aloth's 16 in Perception to Might, but you couldn't take two points out of it to give him a might of 14). What reassignments would you make? The frontliners in BG2 did not have an average 15 Strength. Jaheira and Mazzy had 15 Strength, while every other warrior was sporting 17s and 18s. Hell, even Yoshimo and Haer'dalis had 17 Strength. More importantly, Pillars is not a d20 game. It does not play like a d20 game. Scaling percentage bonuses are more important than set integer bonuses that lose importance over the course of level gain.

Yep. One point that really got me: one character still asks you if you've ever conceived a child if you're a Godlike ... even though Godlike are infertile.

Bester's IEMod can do this using the ChangeClass command. You can't move around their attributes (yet), but you can relevel them up from 0 in whatever class. Aloth Paladin gogogo

Combat is sometimes avoidable, but not always. In any case, the best way to do this is ... *drumroll* ... advance knowledge. Not all dialogue choices unlocked by attributes actually constitute better choices - sometimes, they may even be worse. You'd need to know which ones are which.

Nothing wrong with that. Although I don't remember Obsidian ever being particularly cheery with their stuff. NWN2:OC was probably he cheeriest and even that still had some dark things going on. Some dark things ... like everyone dying at the end, you mean?

Oh snap. Bester, you are the ... Bester. /shot

That's perfectly adequate. If you want to min to the max, yo, you'd max out both Might and Dexterity. But it's not like there's any pressing need to.

Right, I agree with this entirely. This game is how grimdark should be done. Still, I demand some noblebright in the expansion pack. I actually thought that was pretty cheery and heartwarming. Not the descriptions of how her body was moving when she laughed. Hey, man, don't judge. How'd you like it if some corpses started calling you creepy? Huh? HUH?

Not sure if you've ever played it, but the Miniature Giant Space Pig is a reference to Baldur's Gate II. Specifically to the character of Boo (of Minsc and Boo fame), the Miniature Giant Space Hamster. "Go for the eyes Boo, THE EYES!" For reference, Boo probably wasn't actually a Miniature Giant Space Hamster, but such a creature did in fact exist in D&D cosmology. From the same setting: Murderoids, spellcasting sapient predatory asteroids. Spelljammer was weird.

Right, I agree with this entirely. This game is how grimdark should be done. Still, I demand some noblebright in the expansion pack. I actually thought that was pretty cheery and heartwarming.

Yes, but (a) many stats didn't really matter in those games - for instance, having 16 Int only really affected how many spells you could write in your book, and (b) in BG2, it bears noting, none of the companions actually have bad distributions or bad stats. Attributes are a lot more meaningful in PoE than they were in the IE games, and the distributions on NPC companions are a lot worse.

Companions seem to join up with slightly less experience than the Watcher at time of recruitment.

Bad Builds are worse than Perfect Builds. What. No, come on man, don't you know anything? If you put any thought whatsoever into building an effective character, you're a huge munchkin who doesn't know REAL ROLEPLAYING.

You can find a fine pistol in a hidden item cache two areas south of Gilded Vale. There's also a fine arbalest in the same area. (There's actually a pistol in the game's first area, but it's Terrible. Literally.)

I'm enjoying this game a lot so far, but I've gotta get one thing out of my system - with regards to tone and atmosphere, this ain't no Baldur's Gate successor. That game had an iron crisis, but you know, the world was still generally pretty green. This one has a baby crisis. That's almost comically dark, in an, "oh man guys, how can we infuse our setting with as much misery as possible?" sort of way. Again, I'm enjoying myself plenty, but I feel like it is a little bit played out, and a little bit exhausting. I could stand to see some NOBLE BRIGHTNESS and HIGH ADVENTURE.

QFT. Also, bear in mind that tanky monks take a bit to really come into their own. The first level or two can be rough. You also get a lot more out of Might than most tanks, so ... yeah. Wham pow.

Idealized? Hell, man, I'd settle for "not actively terrible." Eder can only barely tank. Aloth doesn't play to any of the Wizard's strengths. Durance is built as though one person wanted a battle cleric and another wanted a caster cleric, and they settled for being bad at both. Kana Rua's stats are very nearly ideal, but it seems as though this was totally accidental. "Oh man, this guy's pretty badass. Not only do I enjoy his company, I also feel like he's got my back instead of just being a garbage hireling who I keep around for good conversation."

Claiming the ranger is an effective tank because it and its pet can engage more opponents sort of ignores the reality that engagement is almost totally irrelevant to tanking. Maybe rangers are effective tanks, I dunno. But engagement mechanics are not going to help them fill that role.

What makes anyone here think that boss fights are going to be 6-to-1? None of the BB ones were. Barely any IE boss fights were. There's absolutely no indication that AoE and crowd control are going to be useless in boss fights.