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Any idea for a good Cipher Melee build. I'd prefer something in between glass cannon and uber-health. I want medium survivability, solid damage, and prefer to use Estocs. Suggestions?

Finally got White March after waiting for Part 2, and decided to use my first party, with a Monk main character. What I discovered is an amazing synergy between unarmed attacks and the new Cipher spell Reaping Knives - namely the fact that they apparently benefit from unarmed damage boni, as seen here: This makes my Monk do absolutely bonkers damage while my Cipher pretty much generates more focus than she can reasonably spend. The best strategy for everything at that point seemed to be buffing the Monk as much as possible and just letting her take apart everything pretty much on her own. Note that this makes her do 100% raw damage, so the unarmed damage essentially gets transformed into raw. Just to be sure, I tested Reaping Knives on my Barbarian as well, and sure enough, they took over the slot from the equipped weapon, so it's not like they just add their raw damage on top of the equipped weapon. I assumed the Reaping Knives being affected by unarmed boni is not intended, but I went back to check the Accuracy breakdown - and lo and behold, Monks actually get double Weapon Focus boni here. Note that Reaping Knives apparently give you a Weapon Focus bonus even if you usually wouldn't get them for daggers, so long as you have any Weapon Focus talent at all. Here, however, they get it twice - my Monk has both WF: Peasant for the unarmed attack and WF: Ruffian for the secondary set of double stilettos. All of this leads me to believe that this is not merely an oversight or an unintended interaction, but actually designed so that Reaping Knives don't overwrite fists like other weapons, but rather get grafted onto them. adding their damage to the base damage of the fists and transforming it all into raw damage. If so, I very much like my monk being Godlike not just in appearance, but combat ability. tl;dr New Cipher spell Reaping Knives seems to stack with Monk's unarmed attacks, giving them super-strong raw damage fists

...And I have to say it was quite an interesting experience! I also went for "No Rest for the Pro", and it didn't make the game all that much harder now that there's no travel fatigue anymore. And I managed to legitimately miss "Zero Knockouts" achievement in a solo run, which, I guess, should be an achievement in its own right. :D Just for clarity: I was playing without Trial of Iron (I don't believe in legitimate triple-crown-solo anyway) and without Expert mode (finished on Expert my first time, but decided to enable spell area indicators and info on dialogue checks for the second). With a final official kill count of 140, I've successfully finished most of the side quests in the base game (didn't touch the expansions yet, except for some stronghold stuff, but not all of it). A few exceptions (besides party members' quests, of course) are: - Endless Paths of Od Nua. I've only reached level 6, and consciously ignored some heavily guarded stuff on previous levels. I did kill that ogre chieftain on level 3, though. - Divine quests of Galawain and Berath (first could be done without much kills due to a bug, but I decided not to, and second requires clearing out Etik Nol, which is totally not a pacifist thing to do). - Clandestine Cargo - I could do it kill-free with a Rite of Walking Shadows, but it wasn't worth spending such a rare scroll for such a useless reward. Ignoring it (and, eventually, failing due to destruction of the Sanitarium) turned out to be the right decision: I really needed all these stealth rites later. By far, the most interesting find of this playthrough was the fact that this game does have almost everything needed for a "pure pacifist" run with a non-rogue class, even if the developers probably think different. My total number of story kills is 14. That is, 11 in the very first location (too much, I know, but I guess I was a little dumb when I started), and 3 in the final battle with Thaos. Everything in between is strictly optional, as far as the kill counter is concerned. So, after reading about the 12-kill run with a rogue elsewhere, I think that the real minimum would be 7. However, getting clean stats globally would be tricky - perhaps still possible without rogue's shadowing beyond, but I can't be 100% sure. For example, there isn't much XP to get in Chapter 1 unless you finish Raedric's hold (which isn't doable without a single kill), and you really need that XP to up your stealth. And, even if you manage that, I'm not sure a pure pacifist could do Cliaban Rilag without all the extra XP for non-pacifist side quests: for the last guarded door in this dungeon, you need stealth 15 + mechanics 8, or, more realistically, stealth 12 + mechanics 8 + lore 4 + a single rite of walking shadows. Me? I played as a pure pacifist story-wise (refusing to kill anything the game so often tried to trick me into killing just to progress), but wasn't aiming to do my second playthrough super-boring, so I did kill for side-quest XP when I had to - and, in a few cases, when I wanted to, which amounts to around 10 extra kills out of these 140. And, of course, there's that three-tusk staelgar leader whom I poisoned via dialogue without raising the kill count... *** And now, some rant... 1) Athletics and survival still look totally useless, despite their new mechanics. Not sure what was the point of changing them. I mean, high athletics is now equal to 1 extra healing potion per encounter? Great, but who needs that? Survival bonuses look nice... in theory... but in practice, they are just too weak to justify spending so much skill points. Of course, I'm judging from a solo run perspective, so perhaps I'm missing some great tactical opportunities for a normal party... 2) Who the hell decided that limiting item summons to 20 seconds was a good idea?! They are already limited to 1 summon per rest, so you basically killed off a game feature. As if there's not enough dumb "balancing" limits taking the fun out of the game already. This was a huge disappointment and a horrible thing to do with a patch, I never expected to come back to something like this. Although I did find a lot of use for summons in my pacifist schemes, but that's about everything they are good for now. 3) I would very much like it if some future Obsidian RPG showed a little more respect for stealth characters. Namely, I hate proximity scripts which force me out of stealth for a "very important" dialogue before I am technically detected. And I absolutely hate that convenience script on stairs in Heritage Hill tower! Ruining my stealth just to ask if I want to go to the second floor, or to the first floor? Yeah, great idea, great time saver. Especially when there's a bunch of hungry undead waiting for me on both floors, just near the stairs. Thanks devs, I really needed that. Twice. Not that it helped you much in tricking me out of my pacifism... 4) A little less underestimation would be nice too. Remember those looters under Madhmr bridge? I actually sneaked around their 2 lookouts, only to find the rest accusing me of killing them because they "heard fighting". So I just killed them all. That was also the biggest exception to my pacifism, because, technically, I didn't have to, but they didn't give my cruel character any good reason to spare them, and Peregund promised reward... 5) I totally expected the final fight to be tricky on solo path of the damned, but I didn't expect it to be impossible without using a horrible (and, thankfully, still unpatched) exploit. Looks like it is. Cipher is definitely not a bad solo class, but totally helpless against Thaos' will stats and extra resists. My only chance came from re-rolling the stats in a tavern (that was the second time I had to do this in this run, with first being before Cliaban Rilag due to a lack of mechanics) and re-making my cipher into a stupid tank with super-high endurance, deflection and accuracy. Oh, and that exploit too, otherwise I don't think my kiting skills would be enough still. I do remember someone complaining about Thaos being too vulnerable to paralyse-lock in original game, so I assume this was rebalanced with a later patch. Good call perhaps, but still not a good idea to lock ciphers out of the party completely. Perhaps a few skills/talents/items/drugs with good spell-accuracy buffs on self would help. Of course, if anyone knows how to kill Thaos with a solo 12 lvl cipher on Path of the Damned without any dirty tricks, I'd be very interested to hear all about it.

Been thinking of making a good melee cipher build that can take a hit while still dealing good damage. Not saying I'm gonna off tank with it, just don't want to be squishy and prefer using melee weapons as opposed to ranged, any helpful advice would be great, thanks

Hello everyone, At release, it was viable to have a Cipher dual wielding stilletos or sabres. In fact, if you look at the Zealot Fenix build in http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844 , it shows a build I had in mind. However, 3.0 is now released and there have been many changes across the board. Has anyone created a viable dual-wielding build for the Cipher class? If so, can you please share? Thank you in advance!

I thought I'd share my battle with the 3 early bears in the cave...Done on my second try so I had some luck I'm guessing, but at lvl 2 on PotD, you probably need "some" luck since 1 hit and you're dead anyways... I tried this after Eler in my party died in my current Wizard game (hated resting so he had low health) so I may restart as a Cipher again and start over (Trial of Iron). Never did like the whole limits on casts/day anyways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUprh94zNM4

Hey guys, I'm playing through PoE and hit 5th level on easy mode. The hardest thing for me now so far is deciding between all the companions available to me. They all seem so interesting! This is my current line up: Me (a Cipher), Aloth, Sagini, Kana, Eder and Durance. It's a solid party so far, especially because I'm playing on easy, but I wanted to know if I should explore other companions. I'm wondering if playing on easy means I can basically have any party combination I want without really suffering heavy penalties. Also, what companions, in your subjective view, have the most interesting quests / personality? Finally, can I recruit and dismiss and re-recruit companions easily?

might 18 dex 15 Con 10 int 17 per and res is 9. Will this stats let you stand a chance during combat? So question is weapon choice? Should go for 2h or dual wield? Because of per and res, deflection is not that good. So comes the armor issue. Cloth or medium armor? comments, ideas, other build suggestions are welcome.

I noticed that my main character (cipher) suddenly stopped being able to generate focus, and tested until I found the reason, namely the "Drinking Horn of Moderation" neck slot item. To test: I created a new cipher adventurer ("the character" below), and saved the game. I loaded the saved game and equipped the character with a blunderbuss and nothing else, and attacked a paralyzed lion. 2 grazes, 3 hit, 1 crit, grazes at 6~ hits and crits around 12. Result: went from 15 to 29 focus. This is what is expected. Reloaded the saved game, equipped blunderbuss and horn of moderation, exited inventory screen (to let the buff happen), entered inventory screen, unequipped horn, and then attacked the same, paralyzed lion. 2 grazes, 3 hit, 1 crit, grazes around ~7, hits and crits around 11. Result: went from 15 to 18 focus. Same result if you leave the horn equipped. Reloaded the saved game, equipped horn and blunderbuss, got character knocked out, won the fight, and then used the character to attack a paralyzed lion. 3 grazes, 3 hits, grazes around ~7 and hits around 10. Result: went from 15 to 14 focus. All attacks made after this one leave focus unchanged. Focus still refills to half after each fight ends. This is irrevocable and persists through save/load, and also stops draining whip from working entirely, if you level up to 2 and take it and redo the tests with it.

Hello I made a decision that i will play Gun-Cipher charater, propably wood elf. I have some questions about this class since im beginner. 1. What are the best "spells"/powers for Cipher Gunslinger ? (he will propably use bow at the begining) 2. What do you think are the best talents for this build ? 3. What stat distribiution whoud you guys sudgest ? i give him something like 18 MI 6 PE 16 DE 10CON 18 INT and 10 Resolve.. is that good ? Patch is 1.6 if i recall....

This build is adapted for 1.05 and the lower starting focus. Role: Offtank/DPS -You still have all the other cipher goodies, but the micro actually comes from moving around than anything. Race: Moon = Fire Godlike > Wild Orlan = Human -You'll eat some disengagement attacks here and there so having an endurance heal is good. Fire Godlike can also be decent, but Moon is much more forgiving as you run around the battlefield. Fire does give you retaliate focus which is better for mid game. Powers: Antipathetic Field + whatever else. Probably Ectopsychic Echo for the theme, but you are still a cipher in the end with other powers. Stats: Dex > Res > Mig > Int > Per > Con -Besides the typical higher deflection, flavor to preference. Oddly, Grieving Mother can also do this build. -Int is kept relatively high for other effects, but doesn't help the 6 second duration of Antipathetic field for the damage portion -Dex can be dumped for the heavier armor setup, etc, but for the growing pains I like having faster casting at the beginning. Talents: Fast Runner, optional: Weapon/Shield style, Wound binding (for health heals). Gear: Hatchet/small shield, heaviest armor. Optional: Disengage cloak. Playstyle: Target a back row enemy with the Antipathetic Field, then if not engaged, run around so the beam hits everyone. If you are engaged though, you can sort of circle click around them to rotate your beam... Or if you're bored, just eat the disengage attacks and go crazy. Why is this better than ranged cipher? -Talents necessary to realize this build is done at lvl 4, focus gaining is sort of a non issue. -By the time you outgrow Anitpathetic field, you have all the other cipher goodies -Sometimes, you get lazy... cast, shift click move them around the battle area... and still profit for extreme damage. -Sometimes, you wanna have an offtank, this provides a relatively decent one for the early game, and late game, its just about the aoe/cc/damage.

I'm really digging the cipher class, but I can't figure out what the heck Recall Agony even does. I can read the description just fine, but I've tried it in combat and can't see anything relevant in the log. Surely it doesn't just do 30% of one blow's worth of damage over many seconds (in which case it actually gets worse with high int)? If anyone could point it out to me I'd be very grateful

On my solo run last night I found that enemies I affected with the confused condition from Mind Plague were not giving my Cipher focus upon attack. My guess is there is some code that prevents you from attacking your allies to gain cheap focus, and that allegiance-switching/-blurring spells make a target your ally for the duration. This is seen by their target circle changing from red to green on many such spells. I imagine that this would be a pretty simple fix to add a flag to your party members preventing focus gain, but then some code to allow gain from any other target regardless of allegiance. Version: 1.06 Steps to reproduce: Use Mind Plague on a group of enemies from stealth. When confusion sets in for target, start shooting with a ranged weapon. Focus will no go up. I noticed this while fighting Crystal Eaters on Level 12 of Od Nua.

When I discover the temple of Woedica, I can't wear the Woedica hood asI am a Cipher, and no way to fight all the ennemies. Too strong for me. Any idea?

The shield is supposed to only affect melee attacks, and probably only enemy attacks as well. 1. have a party member equip Sura's Copper Plate 2. cast any of cipher's abilities on said party member 3. cipher receives dmg As far as I know it's only affecting cipher's abilities atm. It's quite annoying because Pain Block is a really good buf that provides DR but it kills my Griveous Mother... See the combat log(i casted blindstrike because you can't cast party buffs ooc) you see that after the first miss eder retaliates. I assume the retaliation uses the main weapon as Eder has a stilleto equipped.

My main character, a Cipher, for some reason does not get any AoE bonuses from Intellect, while other characters do. The character screen claims I'm getting bonuses, but the area highlight never shows the yellow zone, regardless of my Intellect. I verified that it's not only a visual glitch - the area is indeed not affected by bonuses. I tried disabling/re-enabling the area highlight to no avail. I also tried manipulating the attribute score through cheats in attempts to "unstuck" the calculation, and it actually worked (I got the yellow zone) until I reloaded from a save. I can no longer reproduce this... The version is 1.0.2.0508, GOG. This kind of ruins my game... Any ideas? All relevant files (saves, logs, screenshots, dxdiag info) are here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqto22xb8lfftzi/aoe_bug.zip?dl=0

Here is the playlist of my finally completed my Let's Play of Pillars of Eternity! Totaling 120 parts (117 actual parts, 3 'extras' where I previously cheated to win the game but decided to go back and finish legit instead), this is my first playthrough of the game, going into it with backer beta gameplay knowledge. I play a Death Godlike Cipher named Abattoir, a Philosopher who tries to show that Death Godlikes (even the big, scary ones) can be kind-hearted and honest. My mouse is, unfortunately, off-center for the first 27 parts due to my monitor's native aspect ratio being 5:4 and me recording the game in 16:9, but I go back to the native resolution on part 28, though it won't perfectly fit youtube. Throughout the series I give thoughts on certain parts of the game, and certainly point out pieces of writing or action that are either done poorly or just completely nonsensical. Overall I enjoyed the game, though as a Baldur's Gate enthusiast I'd give it a 7.5/10. Thanks Obsidian for your hard work. Was quite enjoyable to play one of these kinds of games again.

Hello community, I am a long time RPG player, including both computer and PnP RPGs. Thus I have experience with these types of games. However... I do feel a bit overwhelmed, mainly by the lack of proper descriptions in this game. I decided to start with a ranged Cipher character. I read a few threads around this forum and have an idea what talents/spells are good picks. Skills, however, are a mystery to me. I want to ask - how many points does a character get? Because I want to put a few points in Athletics, Mechanics, Stealth, Lore... you get the idea. Now, I understand it might be better to focus and use NPCs to fill the holes, but I have no knowledge of what NPCs there are. My question is - between how many skills can I split my points and still function late game? I was thinking of getting Mechanics max, Lore up to 10 and some points in Stealth and Athletics. Is it doable? Also how's that for an attribute spread for my Wood Elf (i really really like the female elf model) Cipher: Might 16 Constitution 5 Dexterity 15 Perception 8 Intelligence 17(+1) Resolve 16

I started out really liking Whisper of Treason, but then I read it becomes obsolete with dominate powers later on. Tenuous Grasp (fear/confuse) seems kind of pointless when you can charm or dominate them for a longer duration. Though I guess you could use it against a solo enemy and have it not break on damage. Antipathetic Field apparently does its listed damage once per second, I read, despite the description not stating this. Which makes it do way, way more damage than Soul Shock. A beam shouldn't be too hard to avoid friendly fire with. Though strangely, the description says nothing about an intellect duration bonus, so I guess it doesn't have one? Eyestrike seems like a great debuff. Mind Wave sounds good because it does irresistible raw damage and knocks down a crowd (no friendly fire, either). Do I have all that right?

Does cipher get 1 more spell/power selection at level 12? Having a tough time picking the 2 6th level spells, but if I can pick the third one at level 12, there's no real problem.

So I just got this game and am looking for some help on creating my first character, which I've decided to make a Cipher. I've been reading up on different classes, and I was between a Cipher, Druid, and Wizard. Since I can get a Wizard NPC early, it came down to Cipher and Druid, and the Cipher description just sounded really cool so I figured I'd try one first. According to their description, they sounded like they could play as melee mages, in a sense, but many threads I've seen have made them sound too squishy really to play melee all that much, and that ranged weapons are King with a Cipher. Is it possible to do a hybrid build where I can use both ranged and melee options? I'd like to be able to start out ranged in tougher fights, throw out spells, and then move into melee range or something like that. And with easier stuff just be able to melee. If this is possible, what kind of stats should I start with? For ranged, it seemed to be to max Might, Dex, and Int, and put the rest into Resolve I think? Which means dumping Con and Perception. But would that make me extremely terrible in melee? I really have no idea what a good way to distribute my stat points would be. Basically, I'd like to use both melee and range, and sling spells for CC/damage. Any thoughts/ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated!

So, how far i would get in hard mode with party of 2 fighter as tanks (10/10/10/19/10/19, kinda ballanced), priest, cipher, wizard and chanter.Fighter with shields, and casters with guns. What do you suggest as dps?Is chanter worth just for reload speed aura?I got cipher and priest using pistol and arbuegus and is pretty good.Should i make chanter as off tank when some mob pass my fighters? I played party with 4 melee dps, and i ofted dont have room for them to properly place on target.

As much as I love my cipher, it would appear that amplified wave is bugged. The prone effect caused by the spell lasts indefinitely, as can be seen by these two screenshots showing an hour of game time in between them. This unfortunately makes the spell incredibly overpowered. This occurs on v 1.03.530 from GOG. Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2

Hello people. I would like the community's help on a matter. I want to pick a class and i just can't decide which.I'm torn between a few because they each have some of my prefered playstyles. I like to use tactics and outwit my opponents. I liked the Shadow class from Dragon Age Origins.It has stealth,illusions,bombs and different poisons,basicly loads of fun. I tend to like summoning classes that are more active.Think WoW's warlock and Titan Quest's Spirit. I just want a fun,active and skillfull playstyle.So,that being said,i've reduced my classes to the following: 1.Rogue = in this game it feels too passive with no neat tricks and a few active abilities.You position and auto-attack. 2.Chanter = would've liked more dark and gritty summons but it's ok.It feels passive and it takes long to get them out.Most fights are finished by then. 3.Cipher = I play him melee with focus on illusions and deception.Almost no nukes.But it feels like i'm on the cipher band wagon with everybody and their grandma already there. Please help this poor wretched soul finally pick a class and finish the game(rerolled like 10-15 times)...

Most of the times I used the cipher spell "Ringleader", the enemies are charmed for less then a second, even though it says they're dominated or charmed for 10-20 seconds. Is this a bug or is there something I don't know about? I didn't have problems like this with the "Puppet Master" spell.