Torment .

[Nano]

It annoys me seeing people insist that you should always have high WIS in Torment. Next playthrough I'm gonna play a Chaotic Fighter and dump WIS, and there's nothing you can to do stop me.

 

[Excommunicator]

8/10 is too generous tbh

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

The position of PST on the top 100 codex list is a good indicator of the amount of current storyfags roaming the board.

I know this may come as shock to some of you gentlemen, but one can appreciate both story AND combat.

And so, think of PST as top 100 material for its great story and in spite of its poor combat, while also putting ToEE in the same top for its great combat and in spite of its poor story.


Mind boggling isn't it ?

 

[Jigby]

To me the fighter class is the one that plays the smoothest. I recently played 16WIS 12INT 18CON 11STR and I attackmoved through the whole game. Beamdog surprisingly rehabilitated the thief by fixing pickpocketing, with some basic DEX you can crank your pickpocketing to 130 and you have 100% success rate, you can steal Heart Charms and other consumables ad infinitum. Morte with 2 Heart Charms has something like 95% slashing resists, he can easily tank the black abishais right after you get out of the mortuary. Plus infinite bone charms etc. Of course, once you have Annah she can do it too so being a thief becomes redundant. And the hide in plain sight exploit from BG doesn't work in PST. That said, surprisingly, wizard feels the most dated. Those FFesque animations just don't do it anymore. You cast Elysium Tears for 10 dmg, oh wow thanks. And before the age of online wikias, there was a sense of incomplete information with the wizard. You saw Trias cast the Mantle spell and you wondered whether you missed anything. Same with TNO's Conflagration. You got to the Modron Maze and you saw some unique consumables/spells to learn. You found Pharod's secret hideout and you hovered over every pixel of those bookshelves there. With wikias all of this is gone and the wizard feels naked.

I know, I know, sperging in PST, but it's 20 years old at this point ...

 

[Thac0]

To me the fighter class is the one that plays the smoothest. I recently played 16WIS 12INT 18CON 11STR and I attackmoved through the whole game. Beamdog surprisingly rehabilitated the thief by fixing pickpocketing, with some basic DEX you can crank your pickpocketing to 130 and you have 100% success rate, you can steal Heart Charms and other consumables ad infinitum. Morte with 2 Heart Charms has something like 95% slashing resists, he can easily tank the black abishais right after you get out of the mortuary. Plus infinite bone charms etc. Of course, once you have Annah she can do it too so being a thief becomes redundant. And the hide in plain sight exploit from BG doesn't work in PST. That said, surprisingly, wizard feels the most dated. Those FFesque animations just don't do it anymore. You cast Elysium Tears for 10 dmg, oh wow thanks. And before the age of online wikias, there was a sense of incomplete information with the wizard. You saw Trias cast the Mantle spell and you wondered whether you missed anything. Same with TNO's Conflagration. You got to the Modron Maze and you saw some unique consumables/spells to learn. You found Pharod's secret hideout and you hovered over every pixel of those bookshelves there. With wikias all of this is gone and the wizard feels naked.

I know, I know, sperging in PST, but it's 20 years old at this point ...

The wizard is still disgustingly strong and pretty fun to play. DoT effects keep ticking while you use those big cutscene spells. Prebuffing with the completely broken doppler spell, throwing a bee swarm at your enemies and then effectively stopping time for a long while with a double casted Elysium tears is like 50 damage aoe without your opponents getting any say in it as the spellcasting animations lock them out of doing anything.
That said it can literally break the game. Too many stacked cutscene spells and some scripts break. I killed Trias too hard with doublecasted cutscene spells in EE which bricked the game.

But yeah for a replay if you know all the spell animations and where to get the good spells wizard is a lot less exiting. So much micro management.
Fighter has so many cool axes and warhammers everyone probably just pawned off before on their old runs, since noone could equip them.

 

[Jigby]

Double casting Elysium Tears as a poor man's Timestop. I admit I did not think of that. +1 for being creative

 

[502]

Spoiler

 

[adddeed]

Oh, and one more bad thing.
There is no reason at all to be a warior or thief in this game. Mage is only proper class to be.
All important stats work best with mages and worst with warriors and thiefs so...

I play the game all the way trough with full warrior stats. Lots of fun. Combat incliuding.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Mods? I guess these are still applicable?

 

[Lilura]

I know, I know, sperging in PST, but it's 20 years old at this point ...

Sperging on the EE version no less, lmao.

No one cares what you or anyone else says about the EE version, as it isn't the original and authoritative incarnation.

You played an abomination, nothing more.

 

[Ol' Willy]

incarnation

Pun intended?

 

[Lilura]

I know this may come as shock to some of you gentlemen, but one can appreciate both story AND combat.

Combat IS the story.

And so, think of PST as top 100 material for its great story and in spite of its poor combat, while also putting ToEE in the same top for its great combat and in spite of its poor story.

ToEE has a basic backstory, and that's all it needs. The real story of ToEE is its character builds, party composition and combat encounters. The dice rolls tell the best RPG stories of all. Much better than pretentious, torrential trash-text.

 

[Jvegi]

The real story of ToEE is its character builds, party composition and combat encounters.

It's a shame there are like 3 good encounters in the game. 5 or 6 if you happen to be at the right level to make a fight with bugbears interesting.

The dice rolls tell the best RPG stories of all.

At very early levels perhaps. It becomes autoplay fairly quickly. Not much room for interesting stories.

I wish you were right.

 

[Jigby]

I know, I know, sperging in PST, but it's 20 years old at this point ...

Sperging on the EE version no less, lmao.

No one cares what you or anyone else says about the EE version, as it isn't the original and authoritative incarnation.

You played an abomination, nothing more.

Not to worry, I reversed everything with Ghidra, even the trash BIS put out just to be sure.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It's a shame there are like 3 good encounters in the game. 5 or 6 if you happen to be at the right level to make a fight with bugbears interesting.

Fight in the Tower
Fight in the swamp
Fight against giant and the bear
Fight against beautiful cleric in the Moat
Fight against the highest priest in Temple (the one in which gods joins in)
Fights against balor
Fights against other elemental guardians

 

[IThinkTheWorldShouldBurn.]

I've put this game on the back burner for a while now because everytime I play it I ALWAYS play it the exact same way max Wis and Chr and screw everything else... The story and companions are just too good to miss out on for the sake of a few extra hit points and more weapon damage.

I simply can't play it any other way. I don't think I've ever fought the Transcendental One, it's far more satisfying just talking him to death.

 

[Lilura]

It's a shame there are like 3 good encounters in the game.

You presume to lecture me on ToEE, knave?

lmao.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Mage is only proper class to be.

All the spells are heavily nerfed over basic D&D, unless you really like 5 different versions of magic missile.

Meanwhile TNO can just pump STR to god levels and faceroll everything by midgame.

 

[IThinkTheWorldShouldBurn.]

Mage is only proper class to be.

All the spells are heavily nerfed over basic D&D, unless you really like 5 different versions of magic missile.

Meanwhile TNO can just pump STR to god levels and faceroll everything by midgame.

Sacrificing INT or CHRS for STR is a hell of a kick in the balls to what's it's known mostly for, the story/characters... You really do end up missing huge parts of the game... I supposed for multiple runthroughs it 'might' be worth it, but I don't see what could be gained.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Sacrificing INT or CHRS for STR is a hell of a kick in the balls to what's it's known mostly for, the story/characters... You really do end up missing huge parts of the game... I supposed for multiple runthroughs it 'might' be worth it, but I don't see what could be gained.

You can get all the stats you need to do companion/memory quests and still crush all who stand before you. I usually start with low combat stats because the slums are easy, and pump them throughout the early and mid levels. WIS/INT can be boosted with items and tattoos as needed later.

Really stats provide almost no benefit for mages so playing as one sacrifices most of the benefit of STR/DEX/CON. TNO is the only good fighter in the game while Dakkon can do enough as a mage.

 

[IThinkTheWorldShouldBurn.]

Sacrificing INT or CHRS for STR is a hell of a kick in the balls to what's it's known mostly for, the story/characters... You really do end up missing huge parts of the game... I supposed for multiple runthroughs it 'might' be worth it, but I don't see what could be gained.

You can get all the stats you need to do companion/memory quests and still crush all who stand before you. I usually start with low combat stats because the slums are easy, and pump them throughout the early and mid levels. WIS/INT can be boosted with items and tattoos as needed later.

Really stats provide almost no benefit for mages so playing as one sacrifices most of the benefit of STR/DEX/CON. TNO is the only good fighter in the game while Dakkon can do enough as a mage.

It's not really the Mage benefits one is looking for (although at INT 25 even your MMs are taking everything in the vicinity down) it's more the Speech and insight checks which is where most of the game lies. I always raise INT and CHRS to 25... but I don't remember also managing to get a third stat near 18 (although...memory.. fallible)..

I kinda don't see the point of going melee in this game.... from my point of view anyway.. that path doesn't seem to open as much in the game as a high INT/CHRS characters do.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

ringtone

 

[KK1001]

PS:T has more memorable and fun encounters than Pillars of Eternity.

The only flaw is that the third act is pretty rushed and unbalanced wrt trash.

 

[laclongquan]

Mods? I guess these are still applicable?

A good page on howto and whatfor, but nothing new I am afraid.

 

[Lagole Gon]