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chaosapiant posted:What’s the gooncensus on Harrim vs Tristian? I’d been using Harrim forever because he’s an awesome buffer/debilitator/tank/healer, but Tristian is in my party now, we’re all around level 11, and he’s got a poo poo load of awesome spells that seems to keep him pretty drat useful. Is it worth it to get an armor skill on him or what? If you just want heals, Tristian is your man. If you want someone who can offtank a bit, consider Harrim. It really is just "offtank a bit" though. He'll get pasted if you put him right in the thick of it or have him take hits for an extended period. But if one enemy ignores your tank and goes for your squishy characters (a very common scenario), Harrim is solid at picking it up.
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May 11, 2020 00:37
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Perfect Potato posted:Tristian works best if you slap him in the middle of your formation where nothing will touch him, turn off his AI, and just use him as a manual magic turret. He actually works really well as a Mystic Theurge if you dump 4 levels into Empyreal Sorcerer and add him to your party around lv 10-11, though you'll still need at least one other Arcane or Divine caster to carry the workload. Harrim's good as a full divine caster, either Cleric or a 19 Druid for a cheeky early animal companion, but probably benefits from getting a melee weapon with reach since he's pretty garbage at tanking attacks. Cleric's kind of hard to screw up as long as you have Wisdom to spare so either works for pretty much any team comp Man I tried to go down the Mystic Theurge route and he kind of blew for the period that I actually used him which was at about lv 10ish. As a Theurge his channel energy sucks as that's strictly tied to cleric levels so he made for a lovely healer and he was a lackluster blaster mage compared to Octavia due to the huge spell level difference and no auto-attack ability other than cantrips or a crossbow, both of which are pathetic. He has a metric shitton of spells yeah, but they're all subpar for when you get them which is why you need other casters to pick up his slack. Harrim is way better imo. He doesn't need babysitting and can do stuff when he isn't casting spells. He makes a good off-tank by starting the fight casting a buff/debuff/damage spell and then intercepting any enemy that goes around your main tank. As a full level cleric he can do everything you need him to do spell-wise. As a pure full-cleric spellcaster Tristian is better but not by as much as Harrim surpasses him in other ways. I know there were many times when my party got swarmed and Harrim could survive, block attackers and keep casting where Tristian couldn't. Nephthys fucked around with this message at 00:46 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 00:44
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Channel energy is grossly overrated past like CH2/3 and blaster casters are kind of crap in general, especially with the introduction of Kineticists. MT Tristian isn't meant to be a damage dealer or your main spell caster, he acts like a magic battery or repository where you can just haul out whatever heal/buff/debuff/CC spell you want on a dime. I ran him on hard with a Magus, Jaethal Bard and Jubilost, and I had way more spells and healing than I knew what to do with, it got quite silly at times and honestly the biggest knock against the build is having to manage his stupid hotbar
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May 11, 2020 01:14
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sassassin posted:If blur were a spell cast on someone to reduce their perceptiveness you might have a point here. ... the point sailed right past you, dinnit ? The point is : it doesn't matter how much glitter you fling at the guy if his silhouette is permanently "out of focus". The glitter will be out of focus as well.
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May 11, 2020 10:07
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If you are open to using mods, Tristian can be made significantly better while still keeping him pretty much canonical if you just switch his primary and secondary domain.
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May 11, 2020 10:29
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Kobal2 posted:... the point sailed right past you, dinnit ? sassassin posted:Nah. They're both just illusions. Tricks of the light. Should operate on the same rules.
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May 11, 2020 10:45
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sassassin posted:They're both just illusions. Tricks of the light. Should operate on the same rules. If they operated on the same rules they'd be the same spell. Invisibility doesn't affect anything that you pick up after the spell starts (unless you put it inside something that's invisible, like a pouch or backpack you were wearing when the spell was cast). That's why the glitter remains visible. That isn't true of Blur.
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May 11, 2020 13:12
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sassassin posted:They're both just illusions. Tricks of the light. Should operate on the same rules. I don't get it. They're not the same trick of the light, and Glitterdust isn't an anti-illusion spell anyway. It's an LBGT activist spell.
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May 13, 2020 04:18
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I’m about 70 hours in now and partway thru Vordekai’s Tomb. Game just keeps going and going and getting better and better. My party is level 12 and they all have so many options it’s bananas
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May 13, 2020 07:48
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I don't get the Tristan hate. Give him a positive channel phylactery, selective channel, and a few extra extra channels and he makes the entire crawl aspect of the game a lot less tedious by the virtue of keeping everyone topped off. The rest of his spell list are a bunch of great buffs and counter-cc. Harrim is kind of rear end at higher difficulties because he can't build as a dedicated tank due to lack of int/feats so basically always have to baby him since everything is capable of bopping him. He also has way worse heals and doesn't have the charisma for selective channel. I rather have Tristain in the backline with a crossbow doing nothing most of the time and then being really impactful when I actually need him, rather than Harrim being up on the front-line and just exploding from 1 cyclops crit and then losing my source of healing for the fight.
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May 13, 2020 10:44
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SweetBro posted:I don't get the Tristan hate. Give him a positive channel phylactery, selective channel, and a few extra extra channels and he makes the entire crawl aspect of the game a lot less tedious by the virtue of keeping everyone topped off. The rest of his spell list are a bunch of great buffs and counter-cc. I circumvent issues with both characters by having Tristian contribute by spamming Blessing of Faithful untill he gets more spell slots, and harrim becomes a decent off-tank by fighting defensively or contributes to damage with a reach weapon, enlarge and self-buffs(it becomes trivial when you also get Righteous Might). As weird as some of the choices are for things like their domains, it's still a cleric, you can do almost anything you want with them.
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May 13, 2020 14:32
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I'd understand the need for an off-tank in the party, especially given the low number of companions, but a summon from Tristian is going to offtank better than Harrim anyway.
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May 13, 2020 15:30
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Tristian is Tristian, though
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May 13, 2020 15:34
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Honestly, my biggest feels bad man about this game is that the difficulty levels were obviously created with experienced Pathfinder players and optimizer in-mind. Which is just mind boggling to me that they made so many of the companions completely unoptimized that a lot of them are completely unusable at difficulties. Like Nok-nok, Jubilost, Ekundayo, Tristain, and arguably Linzi are the only ones useable without some really weird build paths. Valerie gets "fixed" with a 1 level dip into Kinetic Knight if you have the DLC, but then she's always a level behind. Like I want to enjoy their companion stories, but I feel like I have to make custom characters to get through the otherwise well designed challenge that higher difficulties provide.
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May 13, 2020 15:38
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Been trucking through this game for the past two weeks and enjoying it quite abit. Never gotten into PnP RPGs so I was really unfamiliar with D20 systems. The difficulty wasn't too bad but that spike towards the end when the wild hunt shows up, if you don't know how to prep they're a tedious nightmare to deal with. gently caress the ghostly guards too. It was the last boss where I just dropped the difficulty a notch. I didn't know how to deal with having a downed party member and trying to revive them in the middle of a clusterfuck going on. Or failing a fort save so my squishy guys get insta-gibbed. I think part of my gripe is how unorganized the feat list is. Its really hard to compare feats when the relevant ones are all over the list. It'd be less of a issue if the game didn't feel so min/maxxy. Might try another playthrough towards the evil alignment. Prefer Harrim over Tristian, just for having a doomer dwarf around. Kingmaker kind of really got my foot into this kind of RPG again. Any recommendations on similar games?
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May 13, 2020 15:58
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SweetBro posted:Honestly, my biggest feels bad man about this game is that the difficulty levels were obviously created with experienced Pathfinder players and optimizer in-mind. Which is just mind boggling to me that they made so many of the companions completely unoptimized that a lot of them are completely unusable at difficulties. Like Nok-nok, Jubilost, Ekundayo, Tristain, and arguably Linzi are the only ones useable without some really weird build paths. Valerie gets "fixed" with a 1 level dip into Kinetic Knight if you have the DLC, but then she's always a level behind. Never heard this game described as a well-designed challenge before. Most people go with "yeah you're going to want to change the difficulty down for certain bullshit parts". Wanting story companions to be optimised for the highest difficulties is some first world problems. Wouldn't really make sense as part of the stories you want to enjoy, either, as it's part of Valerie's character that she rebelled from the role she was born for and kind of sucks at what she's doing now.
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May 13, 2020 16:14
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You're not wrong, but I do wish I had the option to give her a rebuild without using a mod so she can have 13 Int so she can actually take the AC tank feats that she needs for AC tank build. Also, for one person's bullshit is another person's well-designed challenge. PF has a stupidly high amount of system/build mastery and there's basically a massive skill cap for someone willing to brave the tedium of actually constantly pausing for combat or better yet installing the turn-based mod (my preferred way of playing.)
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May 13, 2020 16:18
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SweetBro posted:Honestly, my biggest feels bad man about this game is that the difficulty levels were obviously created with experienced Pathfinder players and optimizer in-mind. Which is just mind boggling to me that they made so many of the companions completely unoptimized that a lot of them are completely unusable at difficulties. Like Nok-nok, Jubilost, Ekundayo, Tristain, and arguably Linzi are the only ones useable without some really weird build paths. Valerie gets "fixed" with a 1 level dip into Kinetic Knight if you have the DLC, but then she's always a level behind. I don't really agree with this. Octavia is decent with the Arcane Trickster build she's set up for. Amiri is great if you give her a reach weapon. Probably best off if you put her down the Two-Handed Fighter path but I'd hardly call that a really weird build for a fighty woman who likes 2-handers. The Tieflings are brokenly overpowered because Kineticist is brokenly overpowered. Harrim isn't super ideal but he works. I don't have experience playing with Regongar or Jaethal but I doubt they're "completely unusable". If it really bothers you, you can just use mods to make them whatever you want though. I turned Nok-Nok into my bard in the late-game. The -2 CHA jester he was meant to be.
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May 13, 2020 16:20
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Vargs posted:I don't really agree with this. Octavia is decent with the Arcane Trickster build she's set up for. Amiri is great if you give her a reach weapon. Probably best off if you put her down the Two-Handed Fighter path but I'd hardly call that a really weird build for a fighty woman who likes 2-handers. The Tieflings are brokenly overpowered because Kineticist is brokenly overpowered. Harrim isn't super ideal but he works. I don't have experience playing with Regongar or Jaethal but I doubt they're "completely unusable". In my experience AT feels very underwhelming and I just keep on wishing I had a full-level wizard instead. Reach weapon Amiri is what I ended up doing with her too, but it felt weird for her to ignore the whole greatsword weapon setup. The tieflings I never really paid much attention since I've only done one run with the DLC and I was playing a Kin and I didn't want to micromanage two Kins. I may have been hyperbelizing when I say completely unusable. More accurately would be to say "introduces so much tedium to keeping them alive and doing their basic function that my desire to go relax by playing ranked LoL starts to overtake my desire to continue playing this game"
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May 13, 2020 16:24
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SweetBro posted:. Valerie gets "fixed" with a 1 level dip into Kinetic Knight if you have the DLC, but then she's always a level behind. How does that fix her? Access to combat maneuvers? How do you suggest building her? I went straight Kinetic Knight with her (probably will respec her to something else now that I'm midgame) but if there's a way to make her better with just one KK level that would be interesting, at least.
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May 13, 2020 16:29
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Not sure how much I can sympathise with complaining that the game demands high system mastery and optimisation to be played on the higher difficulties. Those are the things high difficulty is supposed to be for after all. And none of the characters are so badly optimised to be unusable (except maybe at That Point in the game). Val can be perfectly viable as a pure fighter tank in my experience. Octavia is one of the best characters once you get the ability to sneak attack with any spell. etc
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May 13, 2020 16:32
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Drakes posted:Kingmaker kind of really got my foot into this kind of RPG again. Any recommendations on similar games? Pillars of eternity 1/2.
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May 13, 2020 16:33
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SweetBro posted:In my experience AT feels very underwhelming and I just keep on wishing I had a full-level wizard instead. Reach weapon Amiri is what I ended up doing with her too, but it felt weird for her to ignore the whole greatsword weapon setup. The tieflings I never really paid much attention since I've only done one run with the DLC and I was playing a Kin and I didn't want to micromanage two Kins. I may have been hyperbelizing when I say completely unusable. More accurately would be to say "introduces so much tedium to keeping them alive and doing their basic function that my desire to go relax by playing ranked LoL starts to overtake my desire to continue playing this game" The 1 caster level and feat you trade for being able to dump out stupid amounts of damage per round with the right spells while also improving the damage the character does if you leave the AI in charge is well worth it in my eyes. Being a caster level behind is much less impactful when the vast majority of fights are trash encounters designed to drain resources instead of being a serious threat. The only criticism I might levy against Octavia is that a level of Vivisectionist is generally better than Rogue.
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May 13, 2020 16:36
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Nephthys posted:Not sure how much I can sympathise with complaining that the game demands high system mastery and optimisation to be played on the higher difficulties. Those are the things high difficulty is supposed to be for after all. Honestly, only chapter 1 is an issue with their standard classes on Unfair (what with Valerie crapping herself with a tower shield till level 3, Reg with his ferocity dying from a stray breeze since without Mirror Image, Shield alone does not cut it etc). But they are perfectly viable by the end of chapter 1, even for unfair. And Valerie gets enough AC even without combat expertise as you said, her saves that are not fortitude can be more worrying. Though using some of the characters in their vanilla class all the way to 20 is hard to do now. Amiri functions so much better when you go slayer for at least 10 levels and I have fun playing Jaethal as a different class each time (last one was Bard).
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May 13, 2020 16:47
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Sega 32X posted:How does that fix her? Access to combat maneuvers? How do you suggest building her? Combat Expertise to give her the AC bonus she really needs and combat maneuvers to actually make her useful in combat yeah. Dirty trick is incredibly good and versatile giving even further penalties to attacks against her. And trip is good both damage mitigation and helping allies safely disengage. Otherwise she just stands and takes aggro without actually contributing to the combat state which is something that just can be done better with summons. You're basically just only taking the dip to get Con as pre-requisite instead of Int. Cynic Jester posted:The 1 caster level and feat you trade for being able to dump out stupid amounts of damage per round with the right spells while also improving the damage the character does if you leave the AI in charge is well worth it in my eyes. Being a caster level behind is much less impactful when the vast majority of fights are trash encounters designed to drain resources instead of being a serious threat. The only criticism I might levy against Octavia is that a level of Vivisectionist is generally better than Rogue. It's mostly just having to wait two additional levels to have access to higher level spells. I don't really value blaster casters that highly outside of AoE clear since martials can do comparable DPS without expanding resources. SweetBro fucked around with this message at 17:24 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 17:21
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You don't really have to do anything to "fix" Valerie. You don't even have to multiclass her. Her base class is decent enough as as the game goes on her Armor Mastery, Tower Shield benefits, and full BAB add up to make her a really good tank who is smashing people in the face with one of the many good late game bastard swords. The main problem with Valerie is early game where she has 14 strength so she can barely hit things with her tower shield and quickly becomes encumbered. So you just buy a heavy shield and forget about tower shields until you get some levels/better gear. The only companion with real problems is Amiri because actually trying to keep her using that Ginormous Sword is a ginormous pain.
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May 13, 2020 17:50
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Hypocrisy posted:You don't really have to do anything to "fix" Valerie. You don't even have to multiclass her. Her base class is decent enough as as the game goes on her Armor Mastery, Tower Shield benefits, and full BAB add up to make her a really good tank who is smashing people in the face with one of the many good late game bastard swords. You can switch to other weapons, you just can't take it of that slot. I usually gave her a reach weapon, 10 levels of freebooter, two handed fighter, slayer or vivi and the rest barb and called it a day.
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May 13, 2020 18:00
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IDK, maybe game hot heavily rebalanced, but when I was playing through I calculated that she had like a 40% chance of getting hit by one of the Owlbears inspite of being with the appropriate level and the best gear that was being vendored which is unacceptably low compared to my main which was Sword Saint who was at 10%. Realistically speaking an AC tank that is getting hit by ~50% of the attacks is useless to me. Her AC simply doesn't scale enough with enemy to hit bonuses to just be an AC tank, her damage output is far below mediocre, so without anything more she's not really worth the party slot that could just be filled with like an Aldori Duelist that I can just set in the middle of my enemies and forget about while he just never gets hit. SweetBro fucked around with this message at 18:18 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 18:11
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SweetBro posted:IDK, maybe game hot heavily rebalanced, but when I was playing through I calculated that she had like a 40% chance of getting hit by one of the Owlbears inspite of being with the appropriate level and the best gear that was being vendored which is unacceptably low compared to my main which was Sword Saint who was at 10%. Realistically speaking an AC tank that is getting hit by ~50% of the attacks is useless to me. I can't really comment on your personal experiences directly. That being said, Crane Style, 3 points in Mobility, and fight defensively. As long as you keep her items current (and give her dexterity enhancing items as her max dex bonus creeps up) she should be doing fine. Having a healthy HP base is important too for those stray hits and or attacks that don't care about your AC. drat Will o Wisps. I suppose back to cleric chat, Harrim not being able to get Crane style for that sweet, sweet defensive fighting bonus really hurts his ability to tank as the game goes on. JamMasterJim posted:You can switch to other weapons, you just can't take it of that slot. Oh, I knew I could make her use another weapon but it's her whole backstory so it felt kind of weird to never touch it. Man was I disappointed when I realized that it didn't count as a two-handed weapon.
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May 13, 2020 19:07
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I bench Amiri once the Stag Lord is out of the way (if not earlier). Her sword is a useful crutch in the early game, after that she falls away. Wisps are harmless. Resist electricity then go make a cup of tea while your crew tries to hit them. Both the clerics suck I never use them unless I know there's lots of undead coming up. The part-time healer companions are all good at their main job, carry some scrolls, job's a good un. Valerie seems set up for Stalwart Defender but the whole rooted in place thing from the stance bites me in the rear end as often as not so idk.
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May 13, 2020 19:35
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If you don't like clerics you just didn't put effort in to learning their spell list. Any cleric with 18 wis is better than any martial.
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May 13, 2020 21:13
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ugusername posted:If you don't like clerics you just didn't put effort in to learning their spell list. Any cleric with 18 wis is better than any martial. For how many rounds per day? I don't get far enough in the game for that to matter. Nearly 700 hours played and I've never beaten it.
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May 13, 2020 21:18
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I don't think the half healers can compare to Clerics at all but that's mainly because of how tilted healing spells are towards Heal and Mass Heal. Not only are those potent enough to serve as in combat healing they also heal ability damage and a lot of crippling statuses. I suppose you can buy a ton of Heal Scrolls but that's going to be a real drain for a lot of the game where money can feel tight. Actually, by level 11, does money still feel tight? I remember scrounging for money to get double ring of circumstances but that's a very particular situation. Hypocrisy fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 21:36
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Hypocrisy posted:I don't think the half healers can compare to Clerics at all but that's mainly because of how tilted healing spells are towards Heal and Mass Heal. Not only are those potent enough to serve as in combat healing they also heal ability damage and a lot of crippling statuses. If you rush artisan process early on, you should be set for cash . Aside from a couple items from Hassuf, the only purchases I made before rushlight were from the scroll seller they introduced with Arcana Unleashed.
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May 13, 2020 22:08
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I'm usually swimming in gold after Troll Trouble, and pump it all into infrastructure. I only play on challenging but I don't find I need much healing, and would rather use a smaller party for more xp than fill a slot with a sub-standard murderer. The game throws a lot of scrolls, wands and potions at you, and a big stack of the smallest cure spell is pocket change. Once Linzi gets the song that adds temporary hit points attrition becomes the most minor of issues. Add someone with Resist/Protection from Energy and a cleric doesn't have much to do for huge stretches of the game.
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May 13, 2020 22:33
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Valerie benefits a lot from dabbling in freebooter for the upgraded hogan point move and fast tracking the dazzling tree. That and 9 TSS makes her a tank that's also like a discount Bard, and that +2 or whatever is very much appreciated in the first couple chapters of the game.
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May 14, 2020 00:04
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JamMasterJim posted:I circumvent issues with both characters by having Tristian contribute by spamming Blessing of Faithful untill he gets more spell slots, and harrim becomes a decent off-tank by fighting defensively or contributes to damage with a reach weapon, enlarge and self-buffs(it becomes trivial when you also get Righteous Might). As weird as some of the choices are for things like their domains, it's still a cleric, you can do almost anything you want with them. I've given Harrim spec/improved spec in Necromancy and a reach rod - early on he gets by with Inflict spells (either at reach or to finish off dudes) and Boneshaker/Bonebreaker and finally Harm & Disintegrate. When he's not doing that, healing Jaethal with bad juju or channeling good juju he smacks poo poo with his heavy flail (Enlarged to keep him off the frontline, natch). One thing I haven't been able to ascertain : do the augment summoning/superior summoning feats only work with Summon Monster/Nature's Ally spells, or do they also work with Create Undead ? SweetBro posted:In my experience AT feels very underwhelming and I just keep on wishing I had a full-level wizard instead. AT early on is kind of "eh", it's really good as long as you have scorching rays and then you wish you'd taken the Ranger along instead. However, once you reach AT 10, it becomes a *very* different story as you can send out *sneak attack nukes* ; especially with the turn-based mod which gives you a real surprise round to work with. Even without that you still have the impromptu sneak attack toggle for 3 sneak attack cone of colds a day, and then you can also pack some rods of quicken to do that *and* a scorching ray on the opening turn of a fight. That's a LOT of red numbers upfront. And you're only missing one wizard level and three feats for that (one to take accomplished sneak attacker, two missed from the free ones wizards get). Not super high a price to pay as combat casters don't really need many feats besides spell pen, DC for their choice of boom and maybe one or two metamagic options (but really metamagic costs too much IMO and I'd rather use large piles of money, I mean rods, to do that for me)
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May 14, 2020 22:45
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Ran into what might be my first noticeable bug in this game. Anyone else have an issue with Tomb of Armag not appearing on the map? I got the old man/river/pine crossing event, but never got any events/quests in my capital to deal with Armag. In fact, aside from the occasional event to deal with barbarian raiders, I had no idea there was a barbarian/river kingdom war until it was over and I got a pop up saying “congrats you’re king! Go get armag!” Anyone else have this gap in events or what not? Thankfully I just used the Bag of Tricks mod to reveal hidden locations so I could go to Armagh’s tomb, but now at this point my kingdom is rioting and I’ve got the kingdom difficulty all the way down at effortless level.
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May 18, 2020 00:40
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I think I wound up looking up a map to find it and "discovered" it manually. Not being involved in the war at all seems like a massive trigger to miss. Did you miss the notification to meet with the swordlords that fires off the whole quest chain?
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May 18, 2020 01:19
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Armag's Tomb is meant to be hard to find, with the DC being gradually lowered from completing hidden objectives, and that chapter triggers the instant you return to your throne room after completing Varnhold, there's not supposed to be any gap at all between those chapters
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May 18, 2020 02:13
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