Hi,

I started playing POE for the first time last week. I'm adventuring with 6 characters, still based mainly in Gilded Vale and doing things around there. I have a cypher main character, a fighter I created/hired at the Inn, another fighter NPC that joined in Gilded Vale (starts with an "E" I think...), a wizard NPC I picked up outside the Inn, a priest that I created/hired at the inn, and some nutjob-seeming priest that I picked up on the road outside Gilded Vale.

I'm getting the hang of how to use the fighters, priests, and wizards fairly well. I made my first character a cipher because I thought that the mind-oriented spells sounded like fun. I gave her a bow and am focusing on stealth stuff because I usually enjoy playing rogues. However, I'm finding that I'm not using her cipher abilities at all in or out of combat, and even at fourth level, if an enemy happens to get by my fighters, she's basically as useful as an inflatable dartboard in a fight. I figured I'd retrain her as a fighter or rogue at Gilded Vale, but it turns out that you can't change class when you retrain... just ability scores and spells and stuff.

Do I have any other options here? Is there a way that I can kick her out of the party and make a new main character or do I have to start the game over from scratch?

Thanks for reading.

Ciphers are actually overpowered, much like druids. Turn on your cipher's AI (if you don't want to micro manage her). But *the* most important aspect of a cipher is they cannot function unless their 'Focus' is continually replenished. This is best achieved by giving them a blunderbuss, since those fire multiple pellets which each contribute to keeping her focus from dropping too much. They are slow, so you might want to invest in talents such as 'Gunner'. Head to Dyrford Village as soon as you are able and complete the quest 'A Farmer's Plight', which gives as a reward the unique (and best) blunderbuss Lead Spitter.

Thank you for the advice. :) I'm in Defiance Bay now and things are getting a little easier. I do like how you can retrain NPCs, unlike in Baldur's Gate, so that you can pick skills that they'll actually use. I'm having a lot of fun making repairs to the stronghold as well.

I made the mistake of buying Torment: Tides of Numenera before Pillars of Eternity and was on the fence about buying Pillars because I really, really disliked Torment and I had heard that they were both based on the same game engine. The writing and actual *game* of Pillars is so much better. I suppose it goes to show that it's not what's under the hood that counts as much as what you do with it.