Pillars Of Eternity POTD attributes guide.

[Guest Nater]

Each attribute point above 10 will increase the basic values with which we start, and each point below 10 will lower them.

Might - every point give you bonus ±2 to fortitude, ±3% to damage and healing.

1. Bonus to healing affects the healing a character provides such as class and neutral skills also skills from items, watchers unique skills and scrolls.
2. Fortitude is in my opinion the best defence from 3 saving throws. The strongest crowd control effects mostly targets our fortitude. If we take into account for whom it is most useful for, I would say that tanks and melee characters. For range characters it is not as important because they are on the back line so they will not get hit with attack and cc as often melee characters but if they get hit this can be KO for them so so we should not neglect fortitude too much.
3. It's worth saying that the damage bonus from might is additive not multiplicative so even if 3% bonus to dmg per point looks strong or even op it's not that great as you could think because in game we can get multiple source of additional dmg like weapons enchantment, passives skills like rogue sneak attack etc. But this does not change the fact that a damage bonus is still a damage bonus especially since it is unconditional. Extra damage is certainly valuable for casters who have fewer sources to increase the damage of their spells. Mages also deal different types of damage from spells so it's harder to stack bonus only e.g. to fire damage because mages got not only fire spells.
4. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Might checks occur quite often and will allow us to use brutal force in many ways and situations. It will allow us to dominate our opponent physically and mentally through intimidation. You should not think that using might in dialogues is for a bad guy sure if you break legs or arms of the others it will be "evil" but Bending the bars or breaking the wall for some purpose will not necessarily be a "evil" choice. Some NPC may respect characters with high might. If we want to perform most of might check we should aim for atleast 13+(it's a bit of a pain so) i prefer 16+ point because we can increase the value of might by wearing items that provides +1 to +4 might or bytemporarily increase value with food,prostitution and rest bonuses. Bonuses +X attribute doesn't stack from wearing items the only exeptions is weapon slots so wearing armor with +2 might and ring with +3 might will only consider the highest bonus so we will get only +3 to might but if weapon have +1 might with the same ring +3 we will get +1 and +3 so we will get +4 bonus it works with any attribute. If you need more info about stacking check pillars of eternity wiki.

Constitution -  every point give you bonus ±2 to Fortitude, ±5% bonuses to hp and endurance.

1. To discuss constitution. I must first explain what health(hp) and endurance(end) are. If you know how they works go to point 3. Every characters got endurance. It is value of how much damage a specific character can take before lose consciousness. Endurance regenerates fast after every battle to full even is endurance was at 0 and character lost consciousness. Every spell that heal will recover our endurance but not health so is is good idea to use them in battle.
2. Health is a value of how much damage a specific character can take before lose life. Every time character take damage let's say we take 100 damage then our endurance will be lower by 100 and our health will lower also by 100 and then let's say our rogue has 100 endurance and 400 health (rogues got very low base endurance and their base health = endurance x4 so it is 400 health). In the battle our rogue lost consciousness because his endurance reach 0 but thanks god his team was able to win fight so our rogue got up with 1 endurance and start recover endurance rapidly to full endurance. But his hp didnt recover after battle all damage that he took remain and he got only 300 hp left. If our hp will be lower than our endurance then we can't recover our endurance above our hp value. Hp can only be rocovered by sleeping in the inn or by resting with campfire. As i remember there are 2 abilities that allow us to recover our hp but we need to take them by using talent point so it's not worth. Sleeping in the inn without any resting bonuses is cheap anyway and we can buy campfire wood also cheap so i see no reasons to be afraid of using them. At the end of hp/end i will say it depends on your game options. We can get injury after we lose consciousness and injury is a debuff(like -10 to accuracy or -20% to attack speed they depends on what damage type make your end to 0 if that was cold dmg you will get cold injury) that will remain untill we rest/sleep and if we reach 0 hp we could die or we can get up with agony and 1hp. Agony is a huge debuff and if we got 1 hp and agony next time we get our hp to 0 we will die so keep that in mind to rest your characters well. casters recover spells by resting and items which got use per rest will recover as well.
3. As for fortitude read about it above where i talked about might.
4. If we are talking about constitution then melee characters will need it more than back line characters because they will get hurt more often. I you shoulnd't lower it but i was using 8con for my mkst back line characters you can go for 3 yes but you could be oneshoted by cross fire your endurance at 3 constitution will not likely allow you to heal that character back he will lose consciousness pretty often why would we need dps who cant deal dmg because he is lying on the floor? Remember constitution gives % bonus to hp and end so classes like mage or rogue will not benefits too much from it but class such as barbarian who have the highest base hp and endurance will get the most from it or monk because monk need endurance to sustain wounds and not to lose consciousness in battle to fast. The less endurance characters got the more you need to babysit them.
5. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Constitucion checks appear probably the least often in the game and and rely mainly on the character's durability holding breath, carrying someone up a rope, drinking hard liquor or eating questionable things. Thanks to weapon +2con which can be found in the early phase of the game and other bonuses we can pretty ez pass most of the check with base 10 con. But some check we can make with our companions and maybe they got higher con than us so we can use them.

Dexterity - every point give you bonus ±2 to reflex, ±3% to action speed. 

1. Let's talk about reflex first. In my opinion reflex is the worst of the three saving throws because reflex cc is not as dealdy sure we can be cought by spider web but so what? our caster are o  the back anyway they still can use spells to protect themselfs and attack. Our front line are still tanking and fighting so everything is at it was no? Reflex saves us from mostly aoe damage i mean sure being hit by fireball hurt but if we have appropriate hp pool and healer we dont need to be afraid. Still relfex is usefull but think about it most characters want atleast high perception and dex at 10 or higher so they reflex will not be high enough not not be crited often. And tanks who have min dex they got reflex bonus from weapon and shield style so at the end of the day reflex will not be to low for anyone.
2. Action speed lower or lengthens our action such as casting and attack animation, recovery from our(not enemy) attack and spells and also reloading time from firearms and crossbows/arbalest when it comes to action speed well think about it that way. Who need to have actions the fastest? I think dmg dealers with weapons then casters then tanks. Tanks do noot need to attack often they mainly hold the line and tank sometimes cast they skills like heal or stun. As for the weapon dealers they do dmg mainly from just attacking and attack skills so they need to attack fast the more attack they do the more dmg they will deal very logical right? The last group, that is casters they have one problem which is a limited amount of spells. In the early game this is a big problem so i would rather have more int or prec or might than dex because i would rather cast 1 spell that has bonus to accuracy and aoe/duration or dmg tha cast like 30% faster all of my limited amount of spells. In a perfect world I would like to have max dex on everyone but we dont have enough points to max all attributes.
3. There is a 4th category on hit effect like do something at crit/hit or you got 10% chance to do something on hit or cast something on hit or we got a weapon with RO bypass then we need to think if this effect is worth to maxing dex? Remember in game there are skills/items that allow us to increast attack speed or lower recovery and reload time but we cant lower animations time. And maybe i'm wrong but every point of dex give less than than the previous one this value is i think minimal almost imperceptible but still i would consider it. 
4. When i would take dex over might or perception? Well i think dex is never over perception(maybe for priests whoare only buffing your team since buffs dont need any accuracy to hit your characters but still you will miss auto atack and you will miss like 30% of useful spells and aditional action speed allow you to save how much time 2 sec in total? I dont think it is worth. But dex over might for rogues and rangers with bows. Why? As i said when i was talking about might dmg bonuses which is additive not multiplicative then if we have e.g. dual wield rogues then we need to think how much bonus damage we will get for other sources like weapons enchantments quality solid +30% + 20% from reckless assault sneak attack with upgarde +100% + 25% from other source and + 3 to bypass RO maybe some hit to crit conversion like 60%+ with + 100% additional crit dmg multi. On top of that rogue got almost no possibility of recovery so he will not benefit much from might additional healing. Do you see where I'm going? Additional damage from might is it is almost imperceptible. But is we can increase our action speed In this case then we get true buff to our dps.
5. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Dexterity checks occurs not often almost the same as with constitution. Dexterity allow us to perform fast and quick actions like taking some goods from our interlocutors before they can react. We are one with the blade and step lightly. In some cases, we have the opportunity to draw the dagger and threaten or kill the NPC before it can counter-attack. We are good at throwing dagger, rocks or any other kinds of weapons or light objects it doesn't matter. Also we can dodge the object before it manages to fall on us. Since we can increase value of dexterity i would say base 15dex is enough to pass all check with buffs but rly dex check are not that important from the quest outcomes.
6. As far i know dex doesn't affect chanters chants. Correct me if im wrong.

Perception - every point give you bonus ±2 to reflex, ±3 to interrupt, ±1 to accuracy. 

1. As for reflex read about it above where i talked about dexterity.
2. interrupt is responsible for interrupting actions of the attacked enemy. Mage who got interrupted while casting need to start casting again but the spell is not consumed again. When a e.g. rogue use dual wield skill then if he got interrupted after first weapon strike but before second weapon strike then second attack will not be buffed by this skill so bassicly you lose a portion of a skill. Most of the damage dealing actions got a interrupt expressed as a numerical value e.g. sword (normal one handed weapon)have 0.5 sec, dagger (light one handed weapon)have 0.25 sec. Great sword (two handed weapon)0.75 sec. As you can see one handed light weapons usually got smaller value of interrupt than normal weapons but normal weapons got lower value than 2 handed weapon(in most cases some weapons got enchantment that increase this value). Also spells got interrupt value depends of what spell you use i will not talk about all value here but you just know this the larger weapon is the harder innterupt. I will tell my opinion about interrupt i think it's better to just cast aoe lvl1 spell mage slicken or any other cc if you need to stop casters or running enemy. interrupt is not bad but still why not just use cc? I played mage with high interrupt and high attack speed it was not bad dont take me wrong even kinda useful but still in many cases aoe cc got bigger aoe and i knew if target could do something to me or he couldn't with interrupt is kinda gamble. I would rather say that interrupt is a nice addition and something that annoys casters in both sides.
3. Accuracy, every spellcacter need max per. The only spellcaster that doesn't need perceprion is priest with specific build and maybe chanter witch summoning healing and buffing items (you only use buff and heal spells so you dont need to have any accuracy) but for the others spellcasters just go for max. For tanks it depends but it's not your primary stats but still useful. For any dps you need accuracy so perception is also very good. It kinda depends what build you are going but mostly dps will desire high perc. For off tanks and melee character like fighter or monk who have high base accuracy you dont have to max perception you can set perception at 10 points if you feel that you need points elsewhere.
4. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Perception for dialogue is use often. The perception allow us to see what other eyes can't, secret passages, werid/strange details, the interlocutor's reactions and behavior like lying or being nervous, scared, worried so you can ask better selected questions. Shiny things in the dark dungeons. The world around us with all its little details. In the early game we dont have much ways to increase it and parception chec is quite high to pass so i prefer to have perc maxed for dialogues.

Intellect - every point give you bonus ±2 to will, ±5% to duration, ±6% to AOE. 

1. In my opinion, will is the second most important saving throw of the three. However, the difference between fortitude and will is not that great. Will protect us from being confused, charmed, dominated and also blinded etc. But i was checking and i discovered that some cc like paralyze, petrified and many more can be apply by targetting our will, fortitude, or even reflex and since monsters can use the same spells as a player then player also can use this to even paralyze dragon with high fartitude. My point is that to stack as many points of will and fartitude because reflex can also sometimes apply hard cc but is not that common compared to the other two. I put will in second place because we can find great 2 helmets in the game that can protect us from some will afflictions. And also maybe i'm wrong but i think in the game we face a little less will targeting enemy.
2. Bonus to aoe is useful for everyone that have any aoe skills but to make it worth we need to have a lot of this skills or play class like barbarian who can have cleave on his attack. I remind, we have limited ammout of points so even if 1 or 2 skills look very good with high int it doesnt mean that we need int and also there are few cases to see anything other than maxed int or minimized int. I simply think that if we have skills worth enough to put some point in to int then i dont see why wouldn't i put more in to int. There is also paladin l, paladin just need enough int to cover ally with his aura, shield, lay of hands and also we can have some items with buffs. 
3. We apply a similar principle with the duration bonus to duration will be useful to characters with buffs debuffs skills like lay of hands or constant recovery. That skills works like that "Do something every x seconds" so if we extend their duration then we get more proc of skills more proc = better/bigger effect.
4. The only exception is that we would not want to min int because of having build like dual wield on crit cc weapons. Some rogues are using this build and int is not maxed because even if rogue has some int scaling skills but there are better, stronger, giving us more dps options. Here having max perception is must have because we need crit as often as we can and maxed dex because every hit will inflict cc and crit with dmg multi and many many other dmg bonuses and maybe some on crit other buffs/effect. But maxed int is no needed because even if we got shorter duration of cc but our uptime and dps will be higher thanks from dex. We can see also why im talking about limited amount of points. In perfect world we would love to have maxed dex perc int might but we have to spare some point on con and we have to choose between the most necessary statistics. 
5. But high int is not always a good thing, for damage over time in game there are some skills that works like that "Do x amount of damage in x second" so if we extend duration then the same amount of damage will be done but over a longer period of time = same damage but lower dps. 
6. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Intellect for dialogues is use often most of them can be passed just by having base 13 int + buffs. Intellect will allow us for performing quick thinking, we can outsmart our enemy, we know a lot of things and we can connect the facts. Much of the action will be characterized by cool analysis, a realistic approach to the topic and putting reason and knowledge first.

Resolve - every point give you bonus ±2 to will, ±3 to Concentration, ±1 to Deflection.

1. As for will read about it above where i talked about intellect.
2. Bonus to concentration allow character to take hit and not being interrupted. For mages every interrupt force them to start casting spell again so you could think that maxing resolve is a good idea for casters yes and no i think the bonus is nice but spending around 10 or 15 points into defence stats for dps casters will drastically reduce their damage. But if you get a gear with some resolve then i would put it first for tanks then melee and then casters because i will say this again casters place is mostly on the back line so if your caster get hit it's mainly your fault.
3. For a tanks concentration is better than dexterity in my opinion. Because dexterity can increase our action speed sure but if you get hit even by 2 enemies then you will lose all the potential for fast action. And I would like to remind you that resolve also gives us a bonus to deflection and will, which is better than reflex. That's why for tanks i often min dex and max resolve.
4. Now let's talk about deflection. If I were to briefly describe how this statistic works, I would say that the more points you have, the more each point will mean, which in case of high values will translate into receiving grazes or completely allowing us to avoid attacks. And as we know, the best defense is not to get hit, because if the attack misses, it will not deal any damage to us and will not cause us any weakening or other effects that are unfavorable for us. If we do not plan for a specific character to play the role of a tank, I would recommend simply reducing this statistic to gain points for more useful stats.
5. Now I want to pay attention to the story and role-playing elements. Resolve for dialogue is use most often. There are a thousand words to describe a person with high resolve .A charismatic leader, a golden-mouthed merchant.  A person who, in one word, is able to change the course of a conversation.  Calm and decisive, able to unite the hearts of the majority.  A man with a moral code, respected, noble or a scoundrel, cunning, deceitful and dangerous.  It's up to us how we use our magical mouths. Resolve in dialogues allow us to persuade or deceive someone. We will be able to bargain for better rewards for completing the task. Haggling over the prices of quest things. Resolve does not allow us to reduce prices in each store by default, as is the case, for example, in the game icewind dale, but still the amount that we can haggle is not that small. However, the greatest advantage of resolve is the avoidance of unnecessary bloodshed, most often in a peaceful way.

 

There we go i hope this guide was atleast a little useful for you. If you have any questions feel free to ask. I will post some of my builds also at this forum so check on my profile. I finished game and uploading videos on yt at this moment. My nick is the same as here. Pillars of eternity was a great game i hope you will also feel this magic when you are able to play just a good game created with love

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 16 by Nater
Adding informations

[Guest Nater]

On 6/25/2024 at 4:32 AM, Nater said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 29 by Nater
i wanted to delete this lost