Party and character creation

[Shevek]

Ya, some of the inns have big resting bonuses too. I think one inn has +4 int.

 

[Nael]

Ya, some of the inns have big resting bonuses too. I think one inn has +4 int.

My favorite is the one in Dyrford that has like +2 Might, +2 Int, and +2 Dex. Something for everybody.

 

[Seaking4]

There's a great one in Twin Elms because you can carry the bonuses (three + 2s) all the way to the final boss.

 

[Ellef]

Don't forget banging Serel gives resting bonuses as well.

 

[Ellef]

Here's my PoTD party.

Fire godlike barbarian with retaliation plate and One Stands Alone feat. The other guys are just window dressing.

One stands alone gives you +20 dmg to each attack. You have retaliation, carnage, battleforged from fire godlike, and dual wielding spears. A lot of attacks getting +20.

 

[sser]

My barbarian has about 10-11,000 more damage than the next person. Using a 'special mace' and a high-accuracy, high-bonus when below-50% endurance spear. I go rage when he's low health and then just gib shit everywhere. At the start of the game he got knocked down and taken out pretty easily, but as I've progressed he's gotten sturdier and sturdier. He's pretty much a monster now, and I enchanted both his weapons to be kith-killers so anything that walks on two legs and speaks an accented tongue gets merked. I've considered giving him stilettos for ultimate fast-attack speed, but haven't tried it yet, namely because I haven't found any good stilettos. Right now I'm happy with the accuracy/DR reduction he's getting. The only people that give him problems are guys in super-heavy armor.

Side note, don't give Eder that door for a shield. I've had it for about 12-13 hours now and commented to a friend that I was missing knockdowns like all the time. I chocked it up to the fact it's PotD, when in reality the the door-shield has some negative accuracy modifiers. Furthermore, the door causes him to 'bash' shit instead of just hitting it. That's no bueno.

 

[Mastermind]

From what I've read the bash is an extra attack rather than a replacement attack and the only penalty you get from that door is the penalty you usually get from shields.

 

[Ninjerk]

From what I've read the bash is an extra attack rather than a replacement attack and the only penalty you get from that door is the penalty you usually get from shields.

It's a really weak attack from what I've seen.

 

[Ellef]

It has a high interrupt value I think, that's about it.

 

[Ninjerk]

It has a high interrupt value I think, that's about it.

That's good to know, actually.

 

[Urthor]

Penetrating shot+Quick Switch Blunderbuss build is always the right choice

 

[Ellef]

Blunderbuss with the +2 to focus per hit is the optimal build. I don't even bother having more than one, it's enough focus for the fight.

 

[Torrasque01]

The single most broken cypher build right now, though item dependent is tank/offtank retaliation with life draining weapon . Stack the heaviest armor, 1hand with small shield or even 2hand and all the retaliation attacks will net you infinite focus to debuff everything forever, as well as damage.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Suddenly I've been enlightened and invented a rather cool high-perception wizard build:



(will also update my steamguide, but steam bugs out on me atm and doesn't allow any edits)

You can see how good he is at hard countering Ogre Druids here (LP is russian so don't mind my russian commentary, ofc):

 

[Dorateen]

Custom Party wanders out the backdoor of the Black Hound Inn, and finds themselves out on a ledge in the rain. Brilliant.

Spoiler

 

[Azrael the cat]

Playing through on PotD now (chanter PC plus the Obsidian NPCs). I'm feeling like a lot of players (not here, but on the Obsidian and Steam fora) are downplaying certain classes/builds because their perspective on builds has been massively skewed by mmorpgs.

Back in the IE days, and through to 3.5 AD&D, powergaming was all about characters with breadth. Cheese builds were ranger-cleric and 'red dragon disciple with a few bard/sorceror levels' in 3.5, and various degrees of fighter-mage or fighter-mage-thief in 2.0. Now, it's all about min-maxing, where a tank is a tank and doesn't do any damage, a DPS character can't take hits, etc.

The character/party system for PoE seems to have much more in common with the older system, and people seem really confused by that. On the Obsidian boards, there are tons of threads by people upset that they can't figure out how enemy 'aggro' is determined, and complaining that tanks are broken because they don't have a magic 'attack me and ignore the caster, even though it is the opposite of what is logical' button. In each case, they don't even consider the possibility that you might want to give your fighter some damage output, and that doing so will make the enemy pay for trying to disengage.

As a result, you get some rather one-dimensional views on chanters. The dominant view seems to be that chanters must be built for all-in off-tank, or all-in ranged DPS (i.e. max resolve and con, or max dex and might/int). Personally, I'm getting great mileage out of a maxed resolve chanter, but with perception (post patch, so boosts accuracy) and might pumped. Con dropped to 8, because their lower hp pool means the penalty doesn't mean much, keep int at 10 (front-line, so doesn't need big spell radius) and Dex at 10 (want some attack damage, but wearing heavy armour, so no point in bonus dex).

It's the kind of build that would be absolutely standard for a multi-class cheese player before mmorpgs took over single player crpg design. And it's working very nicely - he's not a main tank, but can off-tank well enough to engage anything that gets round Eder, has enough of a wallop to punish enemies that try to disengage, and makes a decent contribution to DPS while buffing and building for invocations.

Not saying that it's some uber-build - just that it should be a fairly normal 'decent build', yet it seems like most players don't even consider it. And often that they're the weaker for it - building tanks with no damage output and complaining that their party can't do enough damage, or (especially this) casters that can't survive 2 hits and complaining that their wizard dies to each fight with an enemy that teleports.

Not a big deal or anything. But it's funny how mmorpgs have changed the whole way that players look at builds now.

 

[GarfunkeL]

It's actually kinda sad - especially in MMOs that support hybrids to an extent and many players shit on them because you gotta be min/maxed to 101%

Anyway, now that 2.0 is out, I'm thinking I should do a new game and actually finish this time and on PotD of course. I'm thinking of making a Barbarian to compliment the companions. Any tips now that 2.0 changed lot of the mechanics?

 

[Lhynn]

stuff

Incorrect. Players game the game, especially mmo players. If overspecialization is rewarded, players will do it. PoE failings are the same than most shit mmos, dont blame the player, blame the game.

 

[Tigranes]

Azrael the cat

Agreed, and I actually wonder if that's also a consequence of keeping a 6-man party. Even in a game where there's a dozen classes, having such a large party means it appears totally sensible to have a collection of idiot savants that are finely honed, 20th century modernism style, to one or two specific functions. These party members are basically gears in a cog repeating the same rote but highly effective action again and again.

I understood why the D&D games did that, but I actually think party sizes beyond a certain number (usually 2-4) is asking for trouble, because then the player has exponentially more options available. I get a lot more enjoyment out of 3-4 man parties in IE games, POE, etc. because you are then forced to have party members diversify a little. That means you are sometimes giving up certain abilities altogether - or simply give them up in a given situation because you can't do everything at the same time. With a 6 person party, nobody has to really consider not bringing a thief along, or a cleric, or a mage - even though you can have some very interesting gameplay when you do that.

A good case is the POE mage. Obsidian wanted to build a mage class that can be built in at least a slightly larger variety of ways than the traditional wizard - i.e. not just Glass Cannon. Even at 1.00, this was the case: at the very least, you could have a blast-oriented mage focusing on non-spell attack power and even medium-range (not back-line) participation, at least up to mid-levels. Before the 1.05 buffs that made a melee wizard handily capable of Triple Crown. However, the vast majority of players simply minmaxed a typical Fireball Machine: you can see this by the amount of people who keep complaining about shades killing their mages, worrying about mage DPS and patches' impact, etc.

It's a pity, because the POE system already provides an impressive variety of possible builds within a class, and there is scope for extending this further.

 

[Lhynn]

Azrael the cat

Agreed, and I actually wonder if that's also a consequence of keeping a 6-man party. Even in a game where there's a dozen classes, having such a large party means it appears totally sensible to have a collection of idiot savants that are finely honed, 20th century modernism style, to one or two specific functions. These party members are basically gears in a cog repeating the same rote but highly effective action again and again.

I understood why the D&D games did that, but I actually think party sizes beyond a certain number (usually 2-4) is asking for trouble, because then the player has exponentially more options available. I get a lot more enjoyment out of 3-4 man parties in IE games, POE, etc. because you are then forced to have party members diversify a little. That means you are sometimes giving up certain abilities altogether - or simply give them up in a given situation because you can't do everything at the same time. With a 6 person party, nobody has to really consider not bringing a thief along, or a cleric, or a mage - even though you can have some very interesting gameplay when you do that.

A good case is the POE mage. Obsidian wanted to build a mage class that can be built in at least a slightly larger variety of ways than the traditional wizard - i.e. not just Glass Cannon. Even at 1.00, this was the case: at the very least, you could have a blast-oriented mage focusing on non-spell attack power and even medium-range (not back-line) participation, at least up to mid-levels. Before the 1.05 buffs that made a melee wizard handily capable of Triple Crown. However, the vast majority of players simply minmaxed a typical Fireball Machine: you can see this by the amount of people who keep complaining about shades killing their mages, worrying about mage DPS and patches' impact, etc.

It's a pity, because the POE system already provides an impressive variety of possible builds within a class, and there is scope for extending this further.

yer so full of it.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Suddenly I've been enlightened and invented a rather cool high-perception wizard build:

Your PoE's part&char creation guide on steam is excellent and have been of great help but many cipher and wizard spells advices are misleading since 3.0. Do you intent to update it ?

 

[Pope Amole II]

Your PoE's part&char creation guide on steam is excellent and have been of great help but many cipher and wizard spells advices are misleading since 3.0. Do you intent to update it ?

Yeah, I do. I'm kinda burnt out on the PoE ATM (because doing the same thing thrice isn't that fun, especially as the changes from 2.0 to 3.0 are not as interesting as 1.0 to 2.0) so I'm dragging that out, but I guess I'll do it over the course of next week.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Your PoE's part&char creation guide on steam is excellent and have been of great help but many cipher and wizard spells advices are misleading since 3.0. Do you intent to update it ?

Yeah, I do. I'm kinda burnt out on the PoE ATM (because doing the same thing thrice isn't that fun, especially as the changes from 2.0 to 3.0 are not as interesting as 1.0 to 2.0) so I'm dragging that out, but I guess I'll do it over the course of next week.

That's good news for my next party. Thx