Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate

Void said:

I never finished PoE1 for some reason, but just jumped into this one. I had no idea what choices to pick for the backstory, hopefully those don't matter much. I remembered ciphers being pretty OP in the last game, and I almost always make some kind of tank (was a Paladin in the first game), so I decided to mix it up and make a cipher/ranger. I only did the starting cave so obviously I'm barely into it, but I remember one of the things that disappointed me in the first game (and maybe is why I let it fade away) was not knowing what the fuck my character would be like later on, even with the ability to read the skill trees, because reading them really doesn't allow me to comprehend how it will actually work I guess. I think I restarted several times with different characters because I'd end up having a character I really didn't enjoy playing (as my main anyway, I sort of don't care when it is just an npc) once it started to gain a few levels and abilities.

Currently my plan is to mark something so bear and I get extra damage on it (probably fucked up with choosing the bear too since I get a motherfucking fighter right out of the gate), shoot it with my bow for cipher points (fuck if I can remember what they are called), and then mind bullet them until I have to use the bow again. Subject to change obviously with new skills (like that charm mentioned above) but this was my plan when designing the character at least.

TL;DR anyone have any thoughts as to how viable/fun a cipher/ranger might be later on? Including the bear choice as well. I know there are places I can probably already read about this shit, but I trust you guys more.

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Should work out hard to say though haven't been far enough into the game.

One cool thing about multiclassing Cipher is it works alright with martial classes since you get a free 20% dmg buff from the soul whip and there's plenty of short cast spells. I don't know if it'd be worth taking Charm on such a character but you could I guess. But look at the spells that have .5 cast time, those are the ones you should be looking into as a multiclassed cipher, since you don't want to be casting for 3secs then having 4secs of recovery, that kinda kills the purpose of having the ranger stuff.

On Ranger itself, it's a good multi with Cipher since Cipher generally prefers staying at range and Ranger has a bunch of good passives for that. Bear is... Ok I guess? It's the tanky one, which has its uses, sure you'll also have an actual tank, but having more tanks isn't so bad. It does mean you'll probably not want to focus on the pet damage passives as much though and try to get your own stuff leveled.

One of the cool things you can do with these 2 is use your bear to position your Cipher beam spell around. You won't get it until like, lvl 8 or something for multiclasser(maybe it's 7 I don't remember), but you get a beam you can put on an ally that does damage only to enemies(the beam you can get at lvl 1 does damage to allies which is annoying to position) and it does very good damage, the main issue is generally getting your allies in the right spot means getting hit by disengage attacks or losing damage or whatever but a bear works fine for that(I use my wizard clone summon to do it). The beam is a .5 cast and does very high damage for its level(well on my pure cipher it does, but should still be fine on multi).

Otherwise I'd focus on getting passive damage stuff from ranger to buff your own damage, some tank pet passives, mark is good, maybe the pet heal, then cipher passives for damage(penetration on weapon and the damage whip) and a few good spells, don't need too many, the one that makes enemies take 30% more damage is good for strong single targets, the beam one for aoe, the charm is probably ok to fix some bad situations, there's a nice Robust shield buff to drop on your bear/tank, the one that steals 5armor from the enemy for you(increases damage and makes you tankier), this kind of stuff.

Oh and a little trick I figured out for dialogue checks. While the game only gives you a part of what your other characters have as skills for dialogue checks, it rounds up. Which means having 1 gives you 1 regardless. So it's useful to put 1 in everything on your companions, which basically gives +4 to everything(5 total if you do it on your MC too), letting you pass many of the checks without any effort. After that just pick some to increase I guess.

For actives definitely have one character focus on mechanics though to pick locks and traps. Rogue/cipher preferably for their +2 innate bonus, and if you do drug monk or whatever then alchemy is good, for actives you don't need to stack as much as there's not as many checks I've found, or they use personnal checks(like who do you want to send to jump over that gaping abyss and it checks whoever you send's Atheltics, not the whole party).

Yeah casters are slow starters, it was the same in the first game too. That said I assume martial characters will still be the best for pure damage by a large margin. If you want to make a killing machine main character you're better off looking at multiclass melee based damage dealers. I made mine a pure cipher and while I think it's very useful and pretty strong so far, my damage output is basically meh and even later once I get higher spells, it won't be that great. Luckily my whole team can do damage so it evens out decently enough I think but I know if I made a monk/whatever I'd be punching these fucks so hard I probably wouldn't need to control as much. Like I see how Eder shits on stuff with his garbage tier stats and his fighter/rogue no subclass suboptimal choice, the same with like devoted/assassin dual sabers and 18might 15dex 15per or whatever would fucking destroy everything.

Game isn't really that hard that it matters though, I'm playing on potd and while I've fought some interesting encounters(generally made interesting by having every fucking ranged enemy shoot my main character right at the start killig her instantly) I haven't wiped yet or had to pull all the stops(chain drinking pots and what not). Even when fighting 4+ level bosses(red skulls shit).

Oh and one really annoying bug, if you respec your main character, there's a good chance you'll lose your watcher spells, as well as the training skills you get by paying 3k to some NPCs. I wanted to respec my Cipher to get better spells but I'm kinda stuck with them for now, until hopefully they fix it next tuesday.