Turn Undead was never really good in any D&D CRPG (counting Pathfinder and channel energy as well). You chose Clerics for their spells, not turning ability. And in 2nd Edition, you chose Fighter/Cleric or Ranger/Cleric over vanilla Cleric as well (if you valued efficiency over roleplaying that is).

You take Ranger/Cleric (multiclass) for two reasons: 1) it fights better than single classed cleric; 2) because being multiclassed Cleric/Ranger gives you both clerics and druids spell lists. Sadly, in Icewind Dale it isn't as good in Baldur's Gate 2 because access to druid spells depends on your ranger level, which also means highest level druid spells can't be reached.

In Icewind Dale 1, if you play a solo character, you level up faster, and if that solo character is a single-class cleric, I believe you can actually reach the level where your turn undead can actually destroy many of the undead without having to fight them normally. This could, for example, make the first dungeon, which is filled with hoards of undead skeletons; even if you can't get it to destroy all of them, you should be able to destroy the weaker ones, making the dungeon much less tedious.

Apparently, in Pool of Radiance, a level 6 Cleric (only possible for a human, which means you have to be single-class to do this) can destroy the weakest undead, which means you can get rid of them easily and only worry about the actual dangerous undead.

In Pathfinder, Channel Energy can act as a healing ability, making it far more useful, particularly when you're *not* fighting undead.
* Channel Energy is a multi-target healing ability, available (for some classes) at level 1, whereas multi-target healing spells don't appear before (character) level 9.
* Furthermore, it can be used multiple times per day right away, at a level where you don't get that many spell slots.
* There's one class, the Oracle, which uses Charisma for spell casting and can get Channel Energy, whose use count depends on Charisma. So, you can use the same stat for both spellcasting and Channel Energy uses.
* And in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, there's a mythic feat that adds double the user's Charisma bonus to the amount healed, making it capable of healing a significant amount. This greatly improves healing ability before Heal and Mass Heal become available. (Worth noting that this game has one companion who is set up to benefit from this, although he does have an evil alignment.)

In Dungeon Hack, Turn Undead isn't that useful, but Clerics are useful for other reasons (particularly since this game has spells like Create Food and Water), and there's no Druid class to compete with it.

In IWD, Rangers do get access to level 6 Druid spells, albeit not until level 29, and if the character is no a Ranger/Cleric, only 1 of them per day. They're still missing 7th level spells.

(From what I understand, reaching these high levels is feasible on Heart of Fury mode.)

Maybe so, but good luck of actually reaching those tombs (IIRC, been more than 10 years I played IWD 1) with a solo cleric. You still have a prologue and ton of goblins to kill before you reach the undead.

Well, Oracle is one of my favorite classes, but the problem with your idea is that not every Oracle is a Life Mystery Oracle. And in Kingmaker (with Call of the Wild mod), and WotR optimal mystery is Nature Mystery. And one could of course roleplay many different kinds of Oracle, not just Nature or Life mysteries.
While Channel Energy can be used to heal, problem with healing is that it is inefficient in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. It's much better to not get hit either through controlling the battlefield with spellcasters or using the OP tank builds with high AC and/or Illusion spells. That is not to say that healing doesn't have it's place or divine (cleric) spells are useless - far from it. Heal spell can be used in situation when you actually got critically wounded, and divine spells are very useful for both buffing your DPS characters and protection spell which completely trivialize things like poison or elemental damage.

I'm lost . Which SpellForce 3 version to buy ? Is Reforced includes all the content of the standalone expansions ?

PoE 1 vs PoE 2.Which one?

Is Tyranny worth it?.

And Nox Archaist....nostalgia aside, was this really programmed on an Apple II?. Bit confused

I think not. According to Wikipedia, Reforced is just an upgraded version of the original SpellForce 3 (not available for purchase anymore) and it isn't something like "GOTY" which would contain all available expansions as well.

If healing is the primary focus of the character, then the Life mystery is clearly better. Nature is only useful if you want the character to be good at things besides healing, which may not be that important if one wants to focus on healing.

Also, in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, you can take a mythic ability that gives you a second mystery, so you can have both, or any two mysteries of your choosing.


This sort of thing is one of the issues I have. I find that a reactive playstyle, where you react to what happens during battle (for example, by healing) to be significantly more engaging than a proactive playstyle, where one prevents bad things from happening in the first place.

There's also the issue that the AC mechanic just doesn't scale well; a system where hit chance doesn't change much at higher levels, but where armor and other defenses reduce damage taken, would scale much better. (One of my favorite examples: In 3rd edition with epic level rules, if you somehow reach around level 4000, a 1% level difference can mean the difference between minimum and maximum hit chance, and that's just from the attack bonus gained through leveling.)

Channel Energy during combat can still be useful if the damage has been distributed between your party members, in any case.

Another thing: A spell that grants immunity to a condition has to be cast regardless, using up a spell slot (and some real time), while a spell that removes the condition need only be cast if the condition actually hits. Hence one reason I think a reactive playstyle is better game design here. (One reasonable strategy is to put protective spells or items on your main healer, who can then remove those conditions when they hit other characters.)


I'm not sure if it was programmed on an Apple 2 or if the developers used a more modern computer (with the help of an emulator) to write the code, but the game actually does run on a (real or emulated) Apple 2. Just be aware that the game works best on a hard drive, which is something that was not standard back in the day; while the game is supposed to be playable from floppies, expect a lot of disk switches and load times.

PoE 1 is very awful IMO due to its RTWP mechanic, which is always a bad thing.

PoE 2 has a half-baked TBS option, because since they tacked it on afterwards rather than designing the game with it from scratch like they should have done, so TBS is not done properly in PoE 2.

So I'd say neither. Although I am biased insomuch as I really hate RTWP mechanics.

Also, in PoE 1 the horribleness of the RTWP mechanic is exacerbated by abysmally bad pathfinding AI of your own companions in your party, who often get stuck in in places far away from where the combat is taking place, and that makes them become useless in combat even when you really need them to be helping out.

I didn't play PoE 2 (although I did watch analysis videos that demonstrated how the TBS option is half-baked) so I'm not sure if they fixed the horrible AI problem in that game or not. But definitely they never did in PoE 1.

I'm a bit biased as I'm a huge of Pillars of Eternity games with a combined 1500 hours spent on them, but arguably there are reasons for *why* I'm biased, i.e. they have many great qualities.

Some say you can skip it before delving into the sequel, but Pillars of Eternity 1 is totally worth it. The dialogue and story is impactful and affects key points throughout the game. The combat is strategic and satisfying, especially on higher difficulties. There are two conditions for enjoyment of the game though - you don't mind reading (or listening where there is voice-acting), and real-time-with-pause combat. I prefer it greatly to turn-based (especially tacked-on turn-based like in Pillars of Eternity 2), but if you don't like these things, there is no way in hell you will enjoy Pillars of Eternity 1. If you do, you will discover a true CRPG gem set in a more traditional fantasy setting, compared to its sequel.

Pillars of Eternity 2 is incredibly ambitious - full voice-acting on a book's worth of dialogue with conditional possibilities (your decisions affect the possible narrative often), forking events (not as impactful as you might think, but still enough impact and variety for multiple playthroughs, to experience every possibility), similarly clever and strategic combat (this time with a tacked-on turnbased mode, which I never managed to persist in using for a playthrough, not my style) and a really great theme (PIRATES!) that is permeating throughout the game with sea shanties and everything. There's a lot of political intrigue, meaningful sidequests with great story (some would say sidequests are the main body of the game, as the main quest seems a bit distant, almost optional in parts) and characters that carried through from the first game, with a bunch of new intriguing and well-developed ones. The complexity of the game cannot be understated - I cannot believe this amount of quality and effort came from an indie studio. But apparently, it basically broke the motivation of Obsidian to pursue ambitious CRPGs in this style - Pillars of Eternity 2 bombed in sales and I guess after all that immense effort and love, it left a bad taste in the mouths' of the creators. There is no indication Pillars of Eternity 3 will be made, ever.

So my hard recommendation is both games, for sure. There's enough story that flows from the first to the sequel, that you will miss if you skip it. I don't accept the choice between them ;) there isn't one.

If you find reactive playstyle more engaging, that is your subjective taste and I won't try to change it, to each its own. I will just point out that 3.5 and Pathfinder (un)fortunately don't really support as much as it does proactive. It's mostly because status effects are not just debilitating, but also disabling. Take poison for example: while it covers annoying ability damage it also includes things like Stinking Cloud spell, which completely disables those who get hit by it (if they are not immune). Simply casting Delay Poison (Communal) makes your whole party immune to both effects, and eliminates need to cast multiple restorative spells.

You are right that Channel Energy can be useful during combat if multiple characters are injured, but you need to have Selective Channel Feat in that case.

With the whole Stinking Cloud and Delay Poison situation, I think that, as it stands, both spells are perhaps too powerful for their level.

Stinking Cloud probably shouldn't completely disable those affected. Perhaps if it took away the move action rather than the standard action, it wouldn't be nearly as devastating, or maybe make it only sometimes disable actions. Or, perhaps, make the spell higher level or not include it at all. (In a table top game, being hit with a disabling effect as a player basically means you can't play at all for a while, and that's no fun.)

Delay Poison, as written, provides outright immunity to an entire category of effects for a long duration, and that is a really powerful effect, something that would be more suited to a higher level spell, and one that perhaps shouldn't have a communal version; therefore, such spell should either have a much shorter duration (say, only the current battle, and only castable during battle), or should require a significant portion of the character's magic resources (something that does not map well onto the D&D/Pathfinder spell slots system). As for an actual 2nd level Delay Poison, it would probably fit better if:
* It only worked on pre-existing poisons. (In other words, using it as a preventative measure wouldn't work.)
* If poisons tended to work more the way they usually do in non-D&D CRPGs, where poison does damage over time. Then, this spell would prevent the damage from the existing poison until it wears off or the character gets hit by another poison.

Worth noting that that Selective Channel feat is a prerequisite for Mythic Channel, so if playing Wrath of the Righteous and you're going to be using that Mythic Channel build, you're going to be taking Selective Channel anyway.

Also, with healing in D&D (including pre-3e versions), there is a major issue with scaling, where the game gives you a bunch of weak healing spells, then suddenly an incredibly powerful healing spell. I think it would be better with a smoother progression, where lower level healing spells (particularly in the 3rd through 5th level range) would be significantly stronger, and Heal (and Mass Heal, which might be too much) not being such a huge jump over the lower level spells.

The problem with the game heavily favoring a proactive playing style is that, by the time combat starts, the result is basically already pre-determined, and there isn't enough room for interesting situations to come up once the battle has actually started.

If you are interested in PoE, starting out with PoE might be solid. Some people prefer the original PoE. Also, that way you have the chance to get introduced to the game world. It is a very rich game world, it subverts many conventions of high fantasy and especially D&D.