DD4 is not bad. It's just pretty bad on a magus. Melee sorc is totally fine. And you can go in armor, it's just fiddly and comes with the cost for the privilege.

If I try my hand at Hard, do I need two dedicated tanks? Good chance it's too rough for me, but apart from HATE (more appropriate acronym) and the first few levels, a lot was very easy on Normal, so I want to up it.

Am thinking about this lot
MC Bard+DD4? / Undecided
Jaethal Inquisitor off-tank (possibly w/ greataxe)
Tristian Healer (will deffo need that!)
Octavia Wizard+AT
Ekun? Ranger
Regongar / Valerie Tank-ish


Saw somebody mention that there might be an issue with Seize the moment. Does it "stack" with Outflank?

seize doesn't stack with outflank. It can trigger from summons and pets if you have solo tactics, but that's it.

As to party... If it's just for hard it'll probably be fine. Mobs don't do much there, so a bunch of memers is fine.

I don't mean it in a bad way. Hard is a lot easier than unfair, cause no 200% damage, that's all. I personally don't see much difference between easy and hard, since past A1 you are overcapped on defenses with decent builds anyways. I say correct difficulty would be the one where you have to use resources to win fights, but don't need good RNG to do so. As that can teach something new, much unlike trying till the dice smile on you. If anything, I think newer player that does use tools the game provides to beat the game at whatever difficulty is right for him is better at it and probably has more fun than 'veteran gamer' that save-scums through.

Having 2 bodies to block the flow and a few expendable meatbags to plug holes and backspawns is nice. You don't have to have most anything. The game is flexible enough to substitute most roles with some other class or class combo.

Monk (1 lvl) is so popular because he grants huge benefit in early game to any character with decent Wisdom or Charisma.
First, you get massive AC bonus from WIS/CHA score and Crane Style.
Second, you get 2-nd attack per turn at full BAB.
Without good AC, your character is as good as dead on higher difficulties, because enemies have much higher AR. And 2-nd attack is just too powerful early, when character has only 1 attack per turn.

Armor and shields dont do much anyway, because heavy armor inflicts too high penalty on AC from DEX, and there are buffs that provide almost the same AC bonus as medium/light armour, but without any penalties. As well as shield AC.
"Combat Reflexes" is a prequisite to "Seize the moment" (actually, a clone of Outflank) for a reason. Obviously, Combat Reflexes do matter only if you get some feats to trigger extra AoO (such as Outflank). For example, in "Beneath the Stolen Lands", "Seize the Moment"+"Outflank" is a MUST-HAVE for any melee.

I can understand that. There are huge benefits. I merely dislike that practically all builds have the same usual dips (which also restricts alignment choices), because I dislike that kind of powergaming. When that is said, since I started a new playthrough on Hard, I can certainly understand why people do it. It was a reload inferno, and not close to what I would call fun. Even now, when I'm level 5 on Challenging, we're getting torn to shreds fairly regularly. Simply because I don't have a tank with sky-high AC. May need to put Valerie into the group after all, just so we don't die so regularly. Wanted to play with Regongar as I kinda liked him once I put him into the group. Some fun comments. But holy damn. The guy dies ALL. THE. TIME. Probably because he can apparently stay up/alive for one more round. So even when he goes down with -4 HP or something, enemies still target him, and he gets smashes to smithereens. Really hard to play like that.

I have a question, however. I basically beelined for the Ancient Tomb to get a companion there, because that is what happened in the first playthrough. But there were nobody. Only enemies. Did I get there too fast or something? Later on, both Valerie and Jaethal were found in Old Sycamore.

Have started on Troll Trouble and playing with Harrim instead of Tristian for the story aspect. Feels like playing with 5 people, though, because Harrim is basically useless. Can't fight, and can't heal much either. Doesn't have selective channels either, so healing mid-combat is a bitch.

That's the problem with game balancing, particulary, with how higher difficulty works. Since "difficulty" is the highest at early stages (on higher difficulty settings), your main goal is to break through early stages, even at the cost of weaker power later, since your power in late-game would be enough anyway. At higher levels, some "dips" arent really neccessary. AC from monk? You can get enough AC even without that! Mirror image? Just equip a certain amulet. Etc.
As i said, most (if not all) your companions have shit builds, often - beyond any help. A deadweight, really. Naturally, playing higher difficulties with a deadweight is a nightmare. IDK, what story designers were doing, really. They basically leave us no other options that use mercs or even playing solo. I play solo character on "hard", and i bet, it's much easier, than playing "challenging" as with 6-man party, where 5 are deadweights like Harrim.

That's a good point about the difficulty trajectory. And I agree, it's hard to balance something like this. There are always people who break the game via all the permutations in builds in a system like this, so then the developers have a hard choice. Do they balance for the more regular players, or the more hard-core? Overall I'm glad they did as they did, because there sure are enough games out there that can be played almost on auto pilot. But it does have the consequence that either you go for the same min-maxed builds that all the guides talk about, or you play on a lower difficulty setting. Normal should be fine after all, and was fun on my first and blind playthrough. Going higher than that..? At least challenging seems to be fine from level 5-6. Maybe Hard too, or with a few more levels. At least if you have a proper tank with sky-high AC.

Many of them seem fine to be to be honest, and I don't get all the complaints about Valerie. Harrim, however, is utterly useless. Maybe they wanted him to fill a different role than Tristian. But if they kinda wanted Harrim as a battle cleric, then he needs AC. Right now he seems pointless to include because he can't do anything well enough, even for Normal tbh.

Haven't used all of them enough in the campaign yet, but what I do like about them is that they are well-written into the story and have a personality. Harrim is pretty terrible even there, but at least he does fit with that depressive god of his. Overall I think Owlcat did a good job actually, as there is no need for super min-maxed companions in a role playing game. It makes things more difficult, certainly, and I'm kinda arguing against my point from earlier, but compared with BG for example, which had many fairly terrible companions stat-wise, this game is better in that regard.

Also good point about solo (if one can survive the early levels), as you presumably gain XP very fast, while as a full group it's a slow process, which means we can't reliably hit level 20 by the end of the game. Solo with all XP for themselves probably get there by mid-game or something?

That's not exactly true. It's just the more scuffed builds you play the more understanding of what you are doing you must have. So the skill ceiling required to play 'regular' builds on unfair is quite high. I even say new players won't have understanding required to play 'fair' builds below unfair, which does form the perspective. Playing with RP-friendly builds(or whatever you want to call it) is much akin to playing football with your hands tied - it's possible, but is hard, uncomfortable and you'd do it much better without such limitations, but it's doable and you can be better by the sheer initial gap in skill and it's possible to win the game like that. Also not everyone wants to constantly micro even the trashiest of filler encounters, so there's also that.

At least it's not like football with our feet chopped off :P

Brief question: In the shortkeys section in-game it is mentioned that you can hit "C" in Kingdom Management and get up a Calendar. This does not work on my end, as it brings up the Character sheet. Is this Calendar thing actually a feature in-game, or is that shortkey mention incorrect?

Edit: Another thing about mechanics. I suspect this won't work, but will ask anyway. With Lingering performance on bards, is it possible to start one type of song, have that active for a couple rounds, while you start another one? Let's say Dirge of Doom and then Inspiring Courage?

Hell if I know about calendar. Never seen/used/needed the feature.

song chaining is indeed a thing. It's how bards do. You swap songs every round. If you start any full action before you click the song it has a good chance to bug out for quite some rounds. It's just another mechanical bug, it shouldn't work like that as there is a feat for two songs and under normal circumstances if the bard starts a new one the old one should end lingering or not.

Solo can get some early levels disarming traps. I broke to 20 on early chapter 6, though i spent some time to grind experince in specific place.

Going back to this post: Does this mean that Outflank + Seize the Moment is a waste, because they do the same thing?

I use Lingering Performance on Linzi. You can "twist" the songs. I can get Inspire Courage and Inspire Competence to function at the same time (for example). Note that it takes an entire round to start a new song, so your options are limited.

edit: note that the feat tooltip tells you that the previous song's effects end immediately. That isn't true, though. They end two rounds after you start the new song.