Insanity is easy enough to deal with. Unbreakable heart is a cheaper to do it.

It suppresses it for the duration, which is the same as immunity in practical terms and it's a level 1 spell, and available to bards as well.

Can you even get to level 20 without XP settings abuse or something like that? Not that there is a huge gulf between level 18-19-20 anyway. We're basically gods at that point in terms of power.

You can. You'd just get it by the house if you haven't missed a single skill check instead of by pitax. Or you could just play one not sharing skill exp and sharing all other. No need to flip anything, and everyone will be bumped to 20 in the house.

In DLC "Beneath the Stolen Lands"? Lol, lvl20 is only the beginning there...
In MC - not sure about 6-man party, but with 2-3 characters it should be very possible too.
Oh, and some classes get a huge bonus at level20. Sword Saint, for example.

Only played that DLC in the main campaign, where it ended after 16 (+1) levels. Sounds like it may be different as a standalone. I play RPGs for the story etc, though, and not for eternal combat, so that wouldn't really interest me.

Find it a little disappointing that it's not really possible to play the game normally with a six-person party and get to level 20. Without choking on cheese ofc. I lacked around half a million XP by the end, which is quite a lot.

Maybe they'll be able to plan this better for the next game, when they apparently have a bot playing through it non-stop.

actually kingmaker module is meant to end at level17, so... yeah they added a bunch of extra XP just so people would bitch less given that it's actually possible to get to 20 with doing absolutely everything through normal play.

Not without choking on cheese based on what I am reading here and elsewhere, and of course my very own completionist game. Not the end of the world, but it's another aspect where I look back and conclude, "BG2 did this better".

Am looking over the 10,000 options for a new playthrough and trying to decide, which is not easy :P Figured I may try something more combat heavy this time, having played a sorcerer, but would still be nice to be able to dish out some spells now and then. Quite fancy the idea of having some type of dragon heritage, so Dragon Disciple looks cool. But how would for example Two-Handed Fighter + Dragon Disciple (+ required dip into e.g. sorcerer) work out in terms of armor and spells? Would he be incapable of reliably casting spells while wearing armor?

There is Magus, but then I'd just be copying Regongar, which seems a bit silly, even if I don't plan to use him in the party.

You have two good options.
1. Melee sorc.
2. SF1/Archae12/DD4/Slayer3
The latter needs a pet alchemist for shield infusion. You could just go ovinrbaane and cut alchemist by midgame, but it's w/e, unless you go solo.

PS and doing magus/DD4 is pretty lame. You can easily get away with abyssal bloodline scion on MC and it'd be a lot more damage.

Is Hard very much more difficult than challenging? I wish there was a proper Core rules tbh. Yeah, it can be set up, but it looks like no of the defined settings have it, and none of them have "normal" enemies. Didn't notice that Normal has crits off. Will this on challenging be enough to make us tear out our hair?
Is SF1 the monk dip that everybody and their mother are using? Would like to avoid that tbh, even if it's probably seen as "unoptimised / un-min/maxed" Tried setting up a few characters in-game, but it's so hard due to all the options. Maybe just go with a plain fighter and call it a day :D Sorcerer is so much more fun to play, because they are versatile and can really impact the battlefield. However, it would be a little silly to maybe do another 200+ campaign with basically the same character again.

One of the reasons I thought about a spell user in combat was that I'd be able to use some of the spells I picked up before but never used, because positioning is a pain and friends are always in the way. Basically all the cones, firesnake etc.

Well... You can always suffer till the oak if that's your preference. Won't be much different from the monk after. The game is designed in a way that monks are 5-15AC ahead, so... Yea.

In early game - yes, the difference is big. Later on, if your characters' build/composion is good, difficulty doesnt matter that much.
That's why, if you want to challenge yourself and play "harder" difficulty, you MUST do it from very start . Otherwise, it wont be as difficult and you would be just cheating yourself.

"No crits" helps only if you play without save/loads (aka "hardcore). Otherwise, it doesnt matter.

I get what you are saying, it's just that I wanted to avoid some of the most common crutches I see listed in almost every build (Vivi or Scaled Fist dip). That said, I forgot that you need to be Lawful for monk, and I wanted to try out Chaotic Neutral to see how that is. Not a big fan of Lawful, otherwise I'd probably do something with Paladin.

Like the idea of a Bard, though, since well.. you know... and now I could be the party's bard. They don't have so good offensive spells, but maybe it could work. Originally I wanted to be two-handed with Greataxes, since there are so many of them and I wasn't really able to use them so much previously. With a bard, maybe rapier + shield would work. Some good rapiers in the game too, and from what I recall, not all hidden away in the last third of the game. Could let Jaethal use greataxes instead. Just a shame that maybe my two favourite characters get shafted by Owlcat a bit. Going with Jaethal for so long was painful.

Perhaps Dragon disciple is kinda bad, but I liked the idea of it, given the history of the region and all. And 4 free strength is tempting.

I'm a bit all over the place now, but it's always so difficult to settle on stuff like this, because it impacts everything.