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Single class wizards because meteor storm and the final minolleta spell are just fantastic to watch.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:49
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My rule of thumb is that if you're going to be primarily depending on casting spells, you should be a pure class because spells scale the best with character levels. On the other hand, weapon attacks scale strongest off of gear and so if you depend on those you're better off being a multiclass so that you can apply two classes worth of passives to those attacks and so that you can get two classes worth of resources for special attacks(Crippling Strike, Flames of Devotion, etc). The only real exceptions to this are Monks and Barbarians, which are the only two weapon classes whose upper level abilities are good enough to justify missing out on multiclass passives, and even then Barbarians can run into problems with Heart of Fury being a resource hog.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:49
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En Garde Motherfuckers posted:Which Chanter summons do people usually favor? I feel like I end up grabbing whatever to use as cannon fodder on a level I don't need anything else, and haven't really dug in to compare the options. Skeletons with the upgrade. I don't know if it's the way scaling works or whatever, but higher level summons seem to immediately melt on PotD. Exception is maybe the floating weapons one. Nasgate posted:Single class wizards because meteor storm and the final minolleta spell are just fantastic to watch. I don't understand Meteor Storm - there's no yellow safety zone, the cast distance is 5 meters, and the radius is 5 meters, so you're forced to hit yourself with it basically.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:58
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Cardiovorax posted:Well, without some kind of tax, it is kind of just intrinsically superior. Having all the strengths of multiple classes without any corresponding weakness to balance it out just leaves single classes categorically in the dust, because it makes multiclasses just straight better and more capable of handling any given situation. Well, this depends on implementation. In D&D 3rd ed. multi-class characters can end up weaker than other equivalent characters, e.g. spell progression; being able to bring bigger numbers to bear is generally better than having lots of crappy little numbers. For that matter, not every kind of multi-classing has to use a (what is, effectively, a) point-buy system, even if it is more structured/restricted as it is in PoE2. Multi-classing is bad, though, and shouldn't be done.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:34
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Scorchy posted:Skeletons with the upgrade. I don't know if it's the way scaling works or whatever, but higher level summons seem to immediately melt on PotD. Exception is maybe the floating weapons one. Yeah, I used to build my chanters taking summons right along every few levels. Then I moved to only taking ogres and the dragons. Now I only take the summoned weapons. Again depends on what level range you're talking about.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:37
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Lt. Danger posted:Well, this depends on implementation. In D&D 3rd ed. multi-class characters can end up weaker than other equivalent characters, e.g. spell progression; being able to bring bigger numbers to bear is generally better than having lots of crappy little numbers. If you compare it with BG2, where a triple class could get the full-scale abilities of three classes at no further cost than higher XP requirements, I'm sure you can see what I mean. That sort of thing is just kind of broken, at least when you look at it in a vacuum, because XP is essentially an infinite resource in any game that allows importing. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Feb 17, 2019 |
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Feb 17, 2019 23:45
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Scorchy posted:Skeletons with the upgrade. I don't know if it's the way scaling works or whatever, but higher level summons seem to immediately melt on PotD. Exception is maybe the floating weapons one. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, I used to build my chanters taking summons right along every few levels. Then I moved to only taking ogres and the dragons. Now I only take the summoned weapons. Again depends on what level range you're talking about. This is helpful, thanks. I'm toying with trying to make a base Barbarian/some flavor of Chanter Howler and the number of factors to consider is driving me a little nuts. I'm leaning towards Troubadour and taking Brute Force to see if I can eventually make Dragon Thrashed worth a drat by debuffing the hell out of fort, but big nukes with Bellower are tempting. For Bellower I'd probably want a summon on a level where I'm not already taking another Invocation to raise the phrase cap, which for what I'm looking at would probably be ogres??? With the number of Invocations available it's a little surprising that Chanters don't get a free one (or a free chant) per PL like casters do with spells.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:06
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En Garde Motherfuckers posted:This is helpful, thanks. I'm toying with trying to make a base Barbarian/some flavor of Chanter Howler and the number of factors to consider is driving me a little nuts. I'm running Konstanten right now as a Howler and there's a really good build for him: Get the Willbreaker morningstar, brute force, ben fidel and the upgrade, long night's drink chant, etc. -- basically, stack everything that debuffs enemy defenses. You end up being able to dramatically knock down enemy defenses, like 45+ pts off of Fortitude, and that *really* helps especially on boss fights against high defense enemies. The only real problem with it is that the build doesn't really come "online" until fairly late game. (Dragon Thrashed is vs. Reflex though, not fort, so you'd need to debuff Dex and Per). From what I've read troubadours almost always outperform bellowers but there are a few niche builds where that isn't the case and I'm not sure what those are. Another good weapon option for chanters is Sasha's Singing Scimitar from the Dark Cupboard, unfortunately you have to buy it, can't steal. What you might want to do is just plan on re-speccing your chanter fairly frequently, so that you only have one summon power at any one time (whatever the best one is). The one constant suggestion I'd say is always take Hel-Hyraf's on any chanter. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 18, 2019 00:12
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Kon made me realize that while summons are cool for a while, Thrice was she wronged is absolutely insane(on classic) Though I gotta ask, what makes the animated weapons so good? I've been fairly underwhelmed with the dragon summon.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:32
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Another turn-based mode observation which may or may not be true: Ciphers seem to be a lot weaker compared to RTWP. Ciphers in real-time benefited from alternating weapon attacks and spells. In turn-based their spells seem to really loving suck. When you only get one attack/cast per turn and your options are fairly lovely Cipher spells... meh.
Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 18, 2019 00:35
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Cardiovorax posted:I'd count that as the kind of drawback tax Basic Chunnel was talking about. It doesn't look like it as much as what POE2 does, but that's just because it's baked into the system more deeply. That makes it feel more natural, but it's definitely also an intentional hobble on multiclasses. I don't think it is a hobble, though - the design goal of D&D 3rd edition was to reward system mastery and punish casual players. Multi-classing running smack bang into "specialists beat generalists" is a way to force players into charops and associated splatbook bullshit: maybe your 5 Rogue/5 Wizard/10 Cleric wouldn't suck so much if you learned how to make a proper character, etc. A multi-class character that uses appropriate prestige classes or whatever doesn't run into the same problems. D&D isn't generally the best example, though, because so much of it was just half-assedly thrown together by blind idiot game designers. I mean, I say that D&D 3rd edition used heavy vertical scaling to punish poorly-built PCs, but it's equally likely they just didn't think about how their revamped class system would function. 2nd edition had level caps for demihumans, but Bioware chose not to implement them in BG2 and buffed multi-classing largely by accident. There are other ways to implement multi-classing though. I believe 4th edition D&D used a 'hybrid' system, where a character could swap a given power from their original class for another from their chosen alternate class. XCOM2 has a very light version where each soldier gets a random selection of cross-class abilities added to their normal skill tree and can choose either on level-up. Or we could just not have multi-classing, because it is trash from a bin for babies.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:41
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Lt. Danger posted:I don't think it is a hobble, though - the design goal of D&D 3rd edition was to reward system mastery and punish casual players. This kind of design is very clearly intended to balance out the flexible multiclassing of 3rd edition. It also rewards specialization over generalizing, and we could certainly have a long debate about what it is meant to do more, but it's very definitely doing both.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm running Konstanten right now as a Howler and there's a really good build for him: Get the Willbreaker morningstar, brute force, ben fidel and the upgrade, long night's drink chant, etc. -- basically, stack everything that debuffs enemy defenses. You end up being able to dramatically knock down enemy defenses, like 45+ pts off of Fortitude, and that *really* helps especially on boss fights against high defense enemies. The only real problem with it is that the build doesn't really come "online" until fairly late game. (Dragon Thrashed is vs. Reflex though, not fort, so you'd need to debuff Dex and Per). This is along the lines of what I was thinking, but wanted to see if I could make Dragon Thrashed cool again in the process too. Oh, well. Doing this with a Troubadour is probably what I'll go with then- at least they can be a Hel-Hyraf/Ancient Memory bot until the good stuff comes online later. And maybe get some mileage out of Thrice Wronged too. I was messing with Bellower a bit earlier and I'm not sure the PL boosts are working properly (or if they are the intended rules are not really clear), plus every build I tried seemed like it ended up with a couple "useless" invocations just to raise the cap, so that's out. One cool thing I did discover with some limited testing: the Frenzy upgrade that Staggers on hit seems to apply to chants as well, if they deal damage. A constant AoE debuff like that is pretty swell at least! I should test if the Raw DoT does as well...
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Feb 18, 2019 00:56
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andrew smash posted:Well bards loving suck so I mean bards in 3.x are probably one of the most balance classes and are pretty fun. In 5e I think they're one of the best? But I could be wrong there.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:58
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En Garde Motherfuckers posted:
Hahhah, does that work with Soft Winds? Or just Dragon Thrashed? Because Soft Winds, while a small effect, *does* target Fortitude. . . hrm hrm hrm.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:09
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Cardiovorax posted:No, I think it really is. Consider just one possible and very systemically simple change: spell saves being determined by character level rather than class level. You sound familiar with the system, I'm sure you can see instantly how that would completely change the dynamics of multiclassing casters at literally every tier of play. As mentioned, though, there are ways to get spell saves determined by 'character level', usually via some prestige class. You're not supposed to make a multi-class Fighter/Wizard, you're supposed to take the Eldritch Knight class and get actual spell progression etc. - but only if you meet the system mastery base requirements, of course. For that matter, D20 was also intended to be a universal system that fully models the 'rules' of the game world - multi-classing and classes in general weren't designed as parts of the player experience, but as descriptive rules that applied equally to monsters and NPCs as well. As said, it's equally likely the designers just proceeded from first principles: a character with 5 levels of Wizard behaves like this, a character with 5 levels of Cleric behaves like this, a character with 5 levels of each is just the two statlines mushed together because that 'makes sense' - regardless of the larger gameplay experience. Essentially, I think "intended" is very generous language when talking about D&D design.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:14
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rope kid posted:It is a common tendency for RPG players to do this in a variety of games. Most analysis is done on endgame capabilities with little to no consideration of how the game plays from start to end. It's definitely a factor in Poe2 where the hardest part of the game is early on. Getting access to those higher tier powers early is huge.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:16
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quote:Essentially, I think "intended" is very generous language when talking about D&D design. It's different from something like a sorcerer 5/fighter 15 who picks up all the low level debuffs and stays competitive with them while getting full fighter BAB etc. for every level past that, too. I think it's very obvious in the design progression of multiclassing from AD&D, just look at the crazy stuff BG2 let you do that I described on the previous page.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hahhah, does that work with Soft Winds? Or just Dragon Thrashed? Because Soft Winds, while a small effect, *does* target Fortitude. . . hrm hrm hrm. I just did some more testing to confirm. I am happy to report that Soft Winds and Dragon Thrashed can at least trigger Spirit Frenzy's Stagger effect on a successful hit. Blood Frenzy's DoT is a little trickier to determine- I was seeing the Additional Effects note in the combat log indicating Blood Frenzy had activated on a Soft Winds/Dragon Thrashed crit but wasn't consistently seeing the DoT effect reflected on the enemy status tooltip, nor did I see red numbers popping up for damage. DoTs can act wonky sometimes, I dunno. I don't trust it, nor do I think a DoT on that scale is more useful for a full party than a pulsing, AoE Stagger on-Hit anyways. Maybe it works better with a low-Int character?
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Feb 18, 2019 02:19
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Gorelab posted:I mean bards in 3.x are probably one of the most balance classes and are pretty fun. In 5e I think they're one of the best? But I could be wrong there. I was responding to a post talking about BG2 which is ad&d 2e, in which bards suck poo poo. I don't know enough about 5e to know one way or the other.
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Feb 18, 2019 03:11
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Basic Chunnel posted:Then again it's also probably indicative of how maladaptive thinking about RPGs has become due to D&D, that this is even an issue. Do you even really need to think of multiclassing as requiring some form of tax? Do we need to think of multiclassing as being inherently sexier than single-classing, enough so that single classes need added incentives? As long as there's a power floor / any character in any configuration can achieve the same basic ends. CRPG D&D and PnP D&D are about as similar as watching porn and having sex. Although the PnP D&Ds that were inspired by CRPGS tend to downplay roleplaying in favor of game systems. D&D 3.x is where this really took off. Nobody is a bigger rules lawyer than a computerized game engine, but 3.x and later definitely encourage rules lawyering a lot more, or "systems mastery" if you want to spin that as a positive. Gorelab posted:I mean bards in 3.x are probably one of the most balance classes and are pretty fun. In 5e I think they're one of the best? But I could be wrong there. 1e bards were pretty hilariously overpowered, but partly that was because of the absurd stat requirements to even qualify. I wonder if prestige classes were consciously based off of them. User fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 18, 2019 03:36
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Deadfire was up for a WGA writing award tonight, lost to God of War it looks like.
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Feb 18, 2019 04:19
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People love Dad Stories, and Deadfire is only really a Dad Story if you squint. Or if you play the Forgotten Sanctum DLC featuring Tayn, who is my son.
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Feb 18, 2019 05:18
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To be fair part of the reason why multiclassing is as broken as it is in BG2 is because the racial level limits which are supposed to balance it somewhat are completely ignored, (because it feels like getting punished for playing an elf).
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Feb 18, 2019 05:20
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2house2fly posted:People love Dad Stories, and Deadfire is only really a Dad Story if you squint. Or if you play the Forgotten Sanctum DLC featuring Tayn, who is my son. Eder is the watcher's Dad, as observed by my toddler who was watching me roll a new character and saw him get hit by a zombie in the beach cave and yelled "oh no, his Dad!"
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Feb 18, 2019 07:58
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Gorelab posted:To be fair part of the reason why multiclassing is as broken as it is in BG2 is because the racial level limits which are supposed to balance it somewhat are completely ignored, (because it feels like getting punished for playing an elf). Yeah, IMO the racial level limits don't really balance multiclassing so much as they punish non-standard characters.
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Feb 18, 2019 08:29
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andrew smash posted:I was responding to a post talking about BG2 which is ad&d 2e, in which bards suck poo poo. I don't know enough about 5e to know one way or the other. They're alright in 5e. But they still suck, because they're just spellcasters with social skills. Vs Chanters, which are rad as hell. Re:multiclassing I kind of miss the Pillars 1 approach where the way you fight was kind of separate from the class you chose. Ranged accuracy being limited to rangers is a particularly frustrating thing.
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Feb 18, 2019 08:54
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Don't all classes have the same accuracy now? Only rangers get driving flight/gunner though so it's still kind of true.
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Feb 18, 2019 09:02
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Avalerion posted:Don't all classes have the same accuracy now? Only rangers get driving flight/gunner though so it's still kind of true. Rangers also get a ranged accuracy passive in their tree. Not wholly necessary, but it was fun in 1 to be a gun paladin.
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Feb 18, 2019 09:20
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Does anyone have a build for Fassina that they particularly like? I'm hitting Forgotten Sanctum now so would like to swap her in.
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Feb 18, 2019 09:37
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Speaking of, what happens to gear when you spirit shift or use conjures like cutzal’s armory, do they disable bonuses from whatever armor or weapon you had equiped?
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Feb 18, 2019 11:28
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I wonder if anybody will be able to pull off a TCS run in TBM. I don't think but who knows.
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Feb 18, 2019 17:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Does anyone have a build for Fassina that they particularly like? I'm hitting Forgotten Sanctum now so would like to swap her in. I just completed a TBM run with her as a Sorcerer. Used her mostly as a support caster with some healing thrown in. Give her some heavy armor a shield and a range weapon. Have her wade in and start casting buffs/debuffs. Returning storm and Relentless storm are also great in TBM. You end up almost perma-stun locking most enemies.
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Feb 18, 2019 17:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Does anyone have a build for Fassina that they particularly like? I'm hitting Forgotten Sanctum now so would like to swap her in. I specc'ed her as a BattleMage and I'm liking it. Scripted her to do a bunch of buffs/protections then Blackbow it up. I'm sure you could fine tune it be better but I like it.
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Feb 18, 2019 17:51
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Chairchucker posted:Yeah, IMO the racial level limits don't really balance multiclassing so much as they punish non-standard characters. Plus humans can dual-class their way to Phenomenal Cosmic Power just fine in the games and they never had racial level limits on tabletop.
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Feb 18, 2019 17:58
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Oh hey, guess I'll never do the endurance trials in SSS. I don't get any more turns after the second wave spawns
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Feb 19, 2019 02:57
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Nasgate posted:They're alright in 5e. But they still suck, because they're just spellcasters with social skills. Vs Chanters, which are rad as hell. Whereas in 1e a high level bard can march an entire city into a river, Hamelin style: social skills turned up to 11. Big Mad Drongo posted:Plus humans can dual-class their way to Phenomenal Cosmic Power just fine in the games and they never had racial level limits on tabletop. Only if they had insanely lucky dice rolls or the DM was using some extremely liberal ability determination system. Not to mention the sucks until level n problem Ropekid already mentioned recently. A dual-classing human in 1e/2e is complete dead-weight to his party for the time it takes to get n+1 in the new class. Obviously that's not an issue in a CRPG, but in PnP your party might just say nah no thanks moocher. User fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 19, 2019 |
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Feb 19, 2019 03:17
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Having so much fun in my turn based play through so far but I did make a huge mistake of multiclassing xoti. While a single class cipher feels fun moving between casting turns & focus generating, xoti jumping between monk duties and priest stuff (buffing, debuffing and healing) just doesn’t work as well. At the moment I’m just having her run headfirst into packs and tank with dance of death/blade turning, which means she has zero action points to do anything but refresh blade turning. The priest/monk kit never worked super well together but boy does turn-based really highlight it. Oh well, I’ll drop her for vatnir I guess.
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Feb 19, 2019 03:46
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Vatnir is more fun anyway. Someone that is unabashedly afraid of everything you're getting into is great. Finally beat SSS(and now all the dlc)for the first time. Definitley going to the DLC earlier next time. SSS in particular feels weird when I'm already in the end game. Though in general I think it really suffers from being DLC instead of integrating throughout the game over a wider range of levels.
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Feb 19, 2019 04:19
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Yeah, it wasn't a great move to make it high level only. It's like 90% arena fights, and with nothing much to break them up they get wearying. Going and coming back throughout the game would have improved things a lot, as would having the items you collect for the optional fights be in the game from the start rather than only appearing when you get the quest so you have to backtrack to a ton of places you've already been. I guess you can do arena fights in between the other DLC 
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Feb 19, 2019 06:01
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