Bad rogue, bad party, bad player?

[Simna]

Hej

 

My character is a rogue, but I think he sucks. I followed the in game recommendation and my stats are: MIG 18, CON 10, DEX 18,  PER 18, INT 10, RES 4. My character is the one that almost always goes down first. Sure he is in the middle of the fights, because Edér is enough to hold the enemies away from Aloth and Durance.

 

My other party members are Edér, Aloth and Durance. We are all at level 3.

We are now facing Raedric in his throne room. Are my party with four members at level 3 (I'm playing on normal difficulty) supposed to win this fight? We are standing in the middle of the room and the enemies comes from every direction.

 

Help!

 

Cant Edit:...

[Cantousent]

So, from what you're saying, your rogue is a melee guy? I would think that it's easier for the bad guys to target someone close-by than your ranged folks? That could be a problem because this game doesn't have 'aggro' in the exactly the traditional sense. There are various tricks to avoid attention or to divert attention away from yourself as a rogue, and you might try these. Nevertheless, a melee character will always require more finesse than a ranged guy for the purposes of avoiding targetting.

 

Plus, a higher level never hurts.

[drunetovich]

Leave this fight for level 7-8 party, it is very tough.

[View619]

Your Rogue is fine, come back to Raedric's when you have a full party. Or, you can speak to Raedric with Eder and leave your other units further away from the throne, allowing you to re-position when the fight starts without being bum-rushed.

 

You can complete the quest without needing to over-level for it.

Edited July 31, 2015 by View619

[nipsen]

Turn the difficulty settings down or grind a few more levels. Did something similar as you and ended up taking a still ongoing break from the game... You're simply not strong enough yet to complete the quest without some serious trickery and luck. Or - no, you're not supposed to be able to do it with a few retries with that party at that level.

[Simna]

Thank you guys. My pride feels much better now. I'll get some levels and come back and finish the quest later.

[Palmtuna]

I would also recommend getting a few more party members. I remembers trying it with four members ( Aloth, Durance, Kana, and my paladin) and dropping the quest until I had a few more people and levels under my belt.

[Merina]

My character is a rogue, but I think he sucks. I followed the in game recommendation and my stats are: MIG 18, CON 10, DEX 18,  PER 18, INT 10, RES 4.

 

Character attributes and level are not everything. To judge about your Rogue, one would need to take a look at your equipment, too, ... and the learned abilities/skills/talents and your combat tactics.

 

CON 10 is okay, but one can clearly go much lower than that ... if playing a Rogue that aims at not getting engaged andl dealing damage to enemies engaged by a defensive Eder or another companion.

 

PER 18 would need an explanation, too. It increases Interrupt. Which weapons do you use? Perception also gives a bonus to Deflection and Reflex. Does that match your playing style?

 

And for certain encounters it can be helpful to equip armor with more damage reduction instead of going for light or no armor for faster recovery.

 

About Raedric at level 3 ... that seems a very low level for Raedric's Keep. After all the quests and tasks in and around Gilded Vale and near Durance, usually one reaches level 5 before entering the keep. And you can hire adventurers, too. Or get Kana and Sagani.

[Simna]

To be honest, I don't really know what my playing style is. Stealth, traps and back stabbing was my first thought. For now I use a pistol and two stilettos. I have a medium (DR 7) scale armour, Fulvano's gloves (Of reflex +5) and Minor cloak of protection (Of fortitude +5, Of reflex +5, Of will +5).
Tips of adjusting my gear would be appreciated.

[jsaving]

CON 10 is okay, but one can clearly go much lower than that ... if playing a Rogue that aims at not getting engaged andl dealing damage to enemies engaged by a defensive Eder or another companion.

 

PER 18 would need an explanation, too. It increases Interrupt. Which weapons do you use? Perception also gives a bonus to Deflection and Reflex. Does that match your playing style?

This is good advice. 

 

On tactics, one common mistake I've seen people make is to use their melee rogue to tank foes, pretty much guaranteeing he'll be the first to fall in most battles.  Rather, you want to selectively pick off foes who've been engaged by Eder, opting for the highest-DPS build you can arrange and then using micromanagement to ensure you don't get surrounded.  I haven't seen a pre-2.0 rogue melee build that prioritizes PER over INT and am puzzled as to why this would make sense, because you wouldn't typically be fighting any single foe long enough for interrupts to matter very much.     

[Merina]

Stealth and Backstab early on? ... Stealth is useful for scouting, finding traps, but sneak attacks bear a huge risk. The standard tactic for rogues really is to let someone like Eder engage enemies and attack those from the side. Then you can drop your defenses and enable everything that increases accuracy and damage.

 

Sure, if there are more enemies than you can engage with Eder, you are in trouble when facing a bunch like Raedric and his guards. That's why fighters can learn how to engage more enemies than one. Where that still is not enough, a larger party can be the key ... NPCs or hired adventurers. Build a good fighter as a second true tank. Or a ranger with animal companion. Use spells like Slicken to prone enemies. Sending a Rogue into the fray, and you can get knocked out in a second due to the engagement system.

 

Rogues are best if wearing robes or less armor to reduce recovery times. Perhaps you've chosen a scale armor only out of fear ... against Raedric. It's kinda heavy and slow for a rogue. Two stilettos do only piercing damage. Two different weapons would do different types of damage. It can be very helpful to enchant weapons as early as possible and add burning damage, for example. It's not a waste to do that. You will find enough weapons or get a chance to buy replacements.

 

Gear alone won't make the fight against Raedric easy at level 3 ... infiltrating a guarded keep with just four level 3 heroes is a strange decision. It sounds as if you've travelled there with haste and ignoring the warnings or the risk.

[wanderon]

One comment on gear - the reflex bonus for the cloak and the guantlets do not stack - this is shown on your character page (it will show as suppressed) when two items boost the same thing only the highest is applied.

[nipsen]

 

CON 10 is okay, but one can clearly go much lower than that ... if playing a Rogue that aims at not getting engaged andl dealing damage to enemies engaged by a defensive Eder or another companion.

 

PER 18 would need an explanation, too. It increases Interrupt. Which weapons do you use? Perception also gives a bonus to Deflection and Reflex. Does that match your playing style?

This is good advice. 

 

On tactics, one common mistake I've seen people make is to use their melee rogue to tank foes, pretty much guaranteeing he'll be the first to fall in most battles.  Rather, you want to selectively pick off foes who've been engaged by Eder, opting for the highest-DPS build you can arrange and then using micromanagement to ensure you don't get surrounded.  I haven't seen a pre-2.0 rogue melee build that prioritizes PER over INT and am puzzled as to why this would make sense, because you wouldn't typically be fighting any single foe long enough for interrupts to matter very much.     

 

The thing is that with the current builds, the class variables and bonuses are so high compared to what you can adjust with the player attributes that what you choose really has no bearing on how you should play the character. A rogue will always have a very high derived "perception" and "reflex" stat compared to other classes. And that's the reason why people would mechanically speaking very obviously choose int to select skills to compensate for low stamina, and so on. And then simply treat the character as a lightly armored fighter. Or a heavily armored fighter with backstab.

 

But if you read the stat descriptions, you could be mislead into believing that having high perception/interrupt and above average attack damage/might, would make all kinds of sense for a "rogue" swordsman, or a pirate duelist, or a posh noble trained in a dojo, etc. Where you would use the rogue indirectly, and put them on the front line, and letting them interrupt nearby spellcasters, priests, even fighters, or knocked down players, stunned monsters, etc., by having that high perception/interrupt option. And then having high damage at the cost of con and so on makes sense - although the actual player stat attributes have practically no bearing on the actual mechanics.

 

And eventually, you will level up and get the class bonuses that differentiate the rogue from a puny fighter. But by that time, the initial stats will be even less significant. So all in all, what to take from this is that it doesn't matter what you choose on the stats, what matters is that you level up enough to gain the benefits of the class variables you cannot choose. But of course, those variables do in fact favor that indirect build where you exploit the high perception for interrupting casters and ability spammers, and backstabbing disabled enemies, etc.

 

And that's how the game works now - get more hit-points, and level the character to get more benefits from the class bonuses. Then come back to the fight, and play the rogue or whatever character there is, in that one specific way the class-variable setup favors. Until you get those bonuses that differentiate the class from the other classes, you're simply too weak, and no strategy and no trickery or stat setup can compensate for it.

 

Why Obsidian would choose this approach, and how they somehow ended up believing that this approach would cause less problems for people in general than the current setup is, as I've droned on about endlessly, completely beyond me. But that's how the game is now.

[magritte]

I think the Raedric quest is bizarrely designed in that it is dropped into your lap so early and the boss battle is so far out of scale with any of the other fights in the quest line.  And it seems a little strange from a narrative point of view because there's this whole push to get you to sneak around and get directly to Raedric instead of fighting your way through the main gate.  And okay, I haven't tried it, but my suspicion is that charging in the main gate would not be as difficult as the Raedric fight.

 

I appreciate the philosophy of not leveling everything with you because it always feels like it defeats the purpose of gaining experience.  I don't feel like my character's actually advancing if common bandits are just as big a threat to me in the end game as they were in the beginning, and it can be really immersion breaking if you decide to clean the giant rats out of some woman's basement when you're a seasoned adventure and it proves to be a challenging fight.

 

However, if you design that way, I think it works better if you make certain regions clearly more dangerous than others, as Divinity: Original Sin does,though admittedly it does impose a certain degree of linearity on the game. Pillars of Eternity is to my mind oddly laid out, especially given that most of us have been trained by other RPG's to try to complete all the quests that interest us in one area before moving onto the next.  It seems strange to me to put a fight that's probably best left to level 6 or so, close to the beginning of the game and have absurdly easy fights in places like Dyrwood that you're not likely to go to until later on.

The optimal way to play PoE seems to be to barrel through the main quest and run hither and thither to clean up side quests that you've left until later...which I find a bit counterintuitive.  It doesn't help that I find the creature levels in the bestiary are a very poor indicator of how dangerous encounters actually are (Ogre Druids ACK!).

[evilcat]

Level 3 with 4 party members with Roderick throne room... that is some pushing. Just come back later. ;-)

 

You can rather easy get level 4 just by doing Gilden Dale quests (Eothas Temple Ruins and stuff) and Cuad Nud.

 

You can get more companions. Kana in front of Cuad Nud and Sagani just behind. Sagani could be interesting since she has cripping arrows (help rogue ) and better armour. You can swap her armor to your character (whois more front fighter).

 

Just doing quests will give you better equipment. Having almost all armor/weapon of solid quality and some rings for deflection/saves would help.

 

In fight alone you can use snacks on party just before combat. Also check potions, well placed Iron Skin potion or Quickness one will help.

 

Sneak to the guards and place Aoeth on the side so he can well place AOE. Aproach Roderick with Eder so everyone will gank him.

Kiling order is something like clerics>archmages>archers>guards>roderic.

 

As far as goes building rogue everything is up to roleplaying and personal taste, so i have just two tips:

1) Make sure you have ways to apply debuffs for sneak attack by either Rogue himself or party.

2) Make regular saves from time to time so if you mess your build, or decide that you want something else can go back just a little.

 

Having something like pistol or xbow (heavy, range hitter)  for initial salvo and then switching to 2 weapons is solid and roguish.