Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[BlackAdderBG]

Pillars is terrible for larping and decent for combatfags.

Pillars 2 is relatively decent for combatfaggotry with the addition of multiclassing, massive improvements to itemization and turn based mode, + it also has some decent exploration. But first one sucks literally at everything.

Maybe. I find multiclassing in Pillars 2 to be terrible. It's very under-baked and lacks good design and synergies. The first one at least had defined direction in its class roles and the spells were fun to experiment with. On top the turn based combat feels tacked on and don't play very well with most abilities, encounter design and overall balance.

I would say Pillars is way more suited for combatfags, it's basicly slightly worse Icewind Dale.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

If he thought paladin class has been subverted "to the point it basically destroyed the concept," I wonder how he'll wrap his head around intelligence being essential on a barb?

The stat system of pillars is always going to cause controversy I'm afraid. The obvious thing is Sawyer made barbarian as one of the last at least in his head. So you have rogue for single target DPS, fighter for more sustained combat and monk for I hit harder the more harm you do to me style. That leaves the "physical melee"(not necessarily) classes with no AoE and a barbarian with no archetype to fill. Then the consequence of this is that it has to interact with stat system and become big brained(you want more aoe and duration for your shout, more aoe for your basic attack addon and more duration for your rage). Honestly fighter is better for conan esque character if you think about it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

If he thought paladin class has been subverted "to the point it basically destroyed the concept," I wonder how he'll wrap his head around intelligence being essential on a barb?

Yeah Barbs are good, but not necceserily when played as a traditional Barb.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Fucking Sawyer lmao. I guess i gotta think about this.

 

[Roguey]

If you're playing Conan as Robert E Howard envisioned, then you should have high int. Howard's Conan was smart (e.g. learning new languages effortlessly).

Gygax agreed:

 

[Lyric Suite]

Conan was smart but the whole point is that he was a force of nature. His physical prowess, a prowess civilized people were unable to obtain as a matter of principle, is what defines Conan. In The Pool of the Black One, when Conan challenges the pirate captain, Zaporavo, Howard actually describes Zaporavo as being the better fencer, but Conan still wins because of his sheer physical superiority. For Zaporavo, it was like fighting a wild tiger. Conan's speed and strengh were such that no amount of skill with the sword could save the captain.

Once again, it seems i'm going to have to work AROUND this shit system to come up with something that makes fucking sense.

 

[Technomancer]

Are Barbarians any good?

Barbarians I find pretty weak for the standard expected fantasy of big reckless damage.

You can do a meat tank barb with massive HP pool. Since barbs get Very High HP progression on level up, something no other class gets. Invest everything into CON, pick dwarf, grab the cursed +2 CON anti ghost sword in Caed Nua. Duplicate later in the game for another +2 (since weapon stats stack), then the +4 Iron Circle ring from WM and finish it off with rest buffs, whores and drugs. Then watch shit dying from old age trying to kill you.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem with barbarians in this game is that you have to metagame to make them good. They can wreak havoc with their AoE and can be made into great "tanks", but it requires foreknowledge.

 

[Haplo]

Fucking Sawyer lmao. I guess i gotta think about this.

Barbs are fantastic... and absolutely a force of nature in PoE1.
...as long as you set their Int high and also preferably include a cleric with AB buffs (Devotions of the Faithful!) and maybe Fortitude debuffs (Radiance aura upgrade AFAIR) - Barbs can eventually target Fort instead of Deflection - if this doesn't scream force of nature, I don't know what does.

On their own, on higher difficulties, their AB might be lacking. Or at least lacking to create snowball effects of aoe mass crits and on-crit aoe effects...

However if you do have good Int for large Carnage zones AND push their AB over the edge to roll crits on most attacks against mobs, they can fell entire mob battle-groups with their attacks. The greatsword (Hours of St. Rumbaldt) or pike (Tall Grass) with Prone on crit is particularly nice for this. Pike is safer and allows easier attacks from behind tanks/door chokepoints... but the sword deals a lot more crit damage
Both of those weapons can be gotten pretty early (as opposed to good one-handed weapons with strong on-crit effects).

 

[Lyric Suite]

Reminds me why i quit this thing in the first place lmao. Why shit gotta be this retarded. Barbarians hitting people in the head with their thesaurus.

 

[Sweeper]

Why shit gotta be this retarded

 

[Lyric Suite]

It just dawned on me that Sawyer is basically the video game counterpart to Jordan Peterson. Everything has to be complicated for no reason.

 

[Haplo]

Pillars is terrible for larping and decent for combatfags.

Pillars 2 is relatively decent for combatfaggotry with the addition of multiclassing, massive improvements to itemization and turn based mode, + it also has some decent exploration. But first one sucks literally at everything.

Maybe. I find multiclassing in Pillars 2 to be terrible. It's very under-baked and lacks good design and synergies. The first one at least had defined direction in its class roles and the spells were fun to experiment with. On top the turn based combat feels tacked on and don't play very well with most abilities, encounter design and overall balance.

I find it clean and efficient. And LOTS of synergies there.
After experiencing 5th ed style multiclassing in BG3, I've gained new appreciation for its effective simplicity.

Loss of class identity, the muddling of borders between classes is real, though.

 

[Nikanuur]

Reminds me why i quit this thing in the first place lmao. Why shit gotta be this retarded. Barbarians hitting people in the head with their thesaurus.

Wrong.
Intelligence keeps their Rage going longer. Funny enough, something similar would've happened in the 'real life' because only an intelligent barbarian would've been able to shape his recklessness into a tool. Non-intelligent barbarian would've been just reckless, i.e. "blind", and much easier to be dealt with.
Anyway, Might and Dexterity still greatly influence the DPS of melee characters in PoE–as in most other RPGs.
But if one's critique is based on "shit and lmao", the correlations are befitting as well, I rsuppose?

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's just something you pulled out of your ass. "Intelligence keeps rage going longer". No it fucking doesn't. It's literal word salad when you say intelligence helps "shape" recklessness when recklesssnes and shaping, least of all shaping derived from higher reasoning, are mutually opposed concepts. You can't discipline recklessness by definition.

In The Frost-Giant's Daughter, Conan loses all reasoning and mental faculities after being bewitched and maddened by Atali. He is able overcome the Frost Giants precisely because in his maddened state his fury was unbridled. Atali expected her charms would render all of his victims helpless but she had another thing coming with Conan since his barbarian rage and madness just made him more dangerous.

Conan's intelligence was accidental to him being a barbarian and those different aspects of his personality often were at odds with one another.

 

[Nikanuur]

I'm done talking to this "lmao shit" groupee with a lustrous nick, and I have ignored him. Such silly persons make me angry sometimes, I don't deny that's something I fight with, and thus I am prone to making mistakes. Then again, it all is a really interesting discussion.

1.
To understand oneself, intelligence can be important. Understanding means knowledge; knowledge means having faculties for control.
We all know that fear, anger, frenzy, and other "subconsciously triggered modes" can be restrained.
But it's a darned shame that people often stereotypically assume that to control oneself means only to restrain oneself. In fact, that's the least important and, if overused, a most damaging approach to choose.
In actuality, to control oneself is supposed to mean "to use oneself well."
With that in mind, intelligence can be of tremendous help and it is absolutely not exclusive with the more primal urges.
The second stereotype is the general misunderstanding that to be intelligent means to get rid of things like fear, anger, ...proneness to frenzy... while in fact, it's much more useful and psychologically healthier to understand them, channel them, transcend them, target them correctly, etc.



2.
I am really unsure about that Frenzy now. It says here:

Playing a Barbarian​

Barbarians in PoE aren't your usual barbarians. A curious feature of the PoE system is that any well built Barbarian is extremely smart. The reason is that Intellect increases the area of effect of his primary abilities and the duration of abilities like Frenzy and Wild Sprint.

So, what's the deal with intelligence and Frenzy? Heck, I'm going to install PoE again to find out myself :D

 

[Lyric Suite]

Barbarians in PoE aren't your usual barbarians.

Than they aren't barbarians at all. The concept has been undermined until it loses all meaning.

 

[Nikanuur]

Oh well. Intelligence does prolong Frenzy after all, considerably. Likely buffing other effects too–such as that mentioned larger Carnage.

Barbarian Int 19, Might 10, Dex 10

Barbarian Int 9, Might 20, Dex 19

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

1. Tries to play the game
2. Gets sidetracked by his own autism
3. Repeat once a year

 

[Lyric Suite]

Pretty much.

There's some good in this game by virtue of the fact it somewhat operates like the classic games. Also, as much as i utterly despised the lore dump the writing in this game suddenly gained a few points after i tried a Larian game for the first time.

That said, it seems i have to fight against the bullshit before i can proceed.

 

[luj1]

If you're playing Conan as Robert E Howard envisioned, then you should have high int. Howard's Conan was smart (e.g. learning new languages effortlessly).

Gygax agreed

Except that in the DnD Conan module, his class in not Barbarian at all you noob...

 

[luj1]

I find multiclassing in Pillars 2 to be terrible.

Hardly the only thing that's terrible in Pillars

 

[Roguey]

Except that in the DnD Conan module, his class in not Barbarian at all you noob...

Barbarians didn't exist as a class in Gygax's D&D when he made the character sheet.

this is why Minsc is a ranger. (Minsc is not a barbarian because it was only a splatbook class until 3rd edition)

 

[Lyric Suite]

Read that description. Everything in how this ability is supposed to work indicates that the intellect has gone out the window. It causes a deflection penalty because the person caught in this isn't thinking right anymore. Endurance and health is concealed because the mind is gone. Their consciousness has receded, all that's left is blind rage.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting to have a system where every stat can help a class, but the way it's implemented here makes no logical sense.

 

[luj1]

If you're playing Conan as Robert E Howard envisioned, then you should have high int. Howard's Conan was smart (e.g. learning new languages effortlessly).

Gygax agreed

Except that in the DnD Conan module, his class in not Barbarian at all you noob...

Barbarians didn't exist as a class in Gygax's D&D, this is why Minsc is a ranger.

Well BG1 is 2ED where Barbarians do in fact exist as a class. Ranger has had a particular "barbarian-like" kit since forever (called Giant-killer in some editions) known for using two-handed weapons...