When you first start leveling up. Put points into Agility/Precision for melee chars. Then once you start getting more points to spend into stats. Do whatever. Basically, it helps to invest into defensive stats for early game. Don't stress out over builds. You get so many respec potions that you can tweak party whenever you find yourself struggling at an encounter.
Choose the Priestess, at least if you on Nightmare. Don't worry about Strength/Constitution, you will get enough DMG/DMG Reduction from equipment. Only characters you probably don't want to pump Agility and Courage 2nd are the casters.
That's what I did for my guys. Made sense cause more defense is important.
Have yet to try the new DLC, but previously I only tweaked courage just enough to make sure the Ogre goes right before the Dwarf to maximize effects of "dwarf-throw"+"twirling axe" combo.
Yeah I wouldn't do that. I also played the OC plus DLC 1+2 on Epic, now DLC 3 on Nightmare (Will start a full Nightmare run after I am done with the DLC). Thing is, the early game is by far the most difficult part of the whole thing. So getting through that on Epic and change to Nightmare for the easier parts, still means you have it beaten only on Epic. Makes no sense.
Play Nightmare difficulty. Honestly it needs a Nightmare Plus difficulty mode. Agility is usually the god stat, except for spellcasters (but usually they can do agility builds too, if you want). The Thief should get improved bombs and get ready to abuse Ice Bombs to freeze enemies. The Ogre should get Gourmet passive and abuse foods, which are usually much better buffs than potions (and they keep the Ogre's Gourmet improvements if he feeds someone else). Alcohol is somewhat useful to give the mages Courage for mana regeneration. Most buff potions are a waste of turns for their terribly short durations. Health potions and CC removal potions are not bad though. Get the Ranger and Dwarf's abilities that remove stunned and knocked down. They're good to have. Do not get synergy passives for standing adjacent to allies unless you are doing special strategies that cause them to constantly stand together (usually archery/overwatch stunts). Abilities that gives bonuses to protection are usually way too negligible and should be skipped unless it's a heal. Any ability that moves an enemy or makes them move (conditions like Scared or the Ogre's taunt) can be leveraged to do lots of bonus damage with attacks of opportunity and overwatch shots. At higher levels the AI will immediately interrupt and break overwatch if they get the chance though (high courage builds can still be used to set up overwatch shots and reposition enemies for a ton of hits before the enemies can attack though). Never use defensive stance unless you're the Paladin, who does an AoE attack on entering defensive stance once you allocate the right passive. Defensive stance's protection bonus is too small and a character in defensive stance cannot make attacks of opportunity or provide a Support bonus, so it's actually shit even for trying to play frontliner and lock down a location. Pay attention to gear that has useful special properties like ignoring protection or other effects and consider keeping them. Passives that give extra health do not get any benefit from Constitution. Unlocking extra tiers of abilities only has to do with the total amount of skill points spent (passives and actives combined), so if you save up and buy a lot of early passive abilities without spending any active skill points, you still unlock an extra tier and have more active skill points left over for the later active abilities. Vice versa is also possible. Also, do not forget to use Randomia powers unless you're doing a challenge run, and the first ability (extra action point) is usually the best to use, whereas the second one (a heal) can be used to revive a knocked down teammate. It's useful to use settings to disable auto-ending the turn if you want to use Randomia powers. And if someone has crappy offensive powers consider giving them a belt with useful offensive items and/or using them for overwatch stunts.
All of the extra characters are playable, but I have to admit the Paladin is the most lackluster from a tactical perspective. She has great defenses but a crap offense and no real support ability. The Minstrel on the other hand is just underrated. He does lack condition removal, but his heals are pretty good, his damage is good, and he can use his turn to toss an extra action point to any ally, which is really, really good (basically trade your Minstrel's action point for the best ability a party member can use). Just don't get carried away with shitty buff/debuff abilities. They're usually a waste of turns, unless they're crowd control abilities or abilities that remove crowd control. This goes for every character, really. The Priestess is a good pick though. She has solid heals and great condition removal, and a decent offense. You can also just stick her in overwatch when she doesn't have a good offensive ability available. Just remember that her buff spells are definitely crap and a waste of precious turns, so just skip 'em.
Eh, the casters don't really care about Agility, it's true, but they do want Courage, since that's their mana regeneration stat, so they get more out of it than anyone.
You can do that too, but COU gives both physical and magic resistance and the initiative helps tactically (although it's not that necessary usually). Paired with the Ranger's defensive stance it's possible to get a party with very high resistance to debuffs and status effects, which make all the difference in avoiding having members of your party get taken out of commission, especially if you're playing without the Priestess (but you can use belt items to get rid of status effects too). It's also possible to just continue stacking AGI above 100 precision since Dodge and Parry are very good stats (so Dwarf/Ranger/Barbarian/Paladin who get both stats benefit a lot here). Usually some CON is good on party members though, since you'll really want the stamina regen once you have a lot of stamina-hungry abilities (unless you have the Minstrel doling out stamina), but when it comes to surviving damage AGI is usually better, so it's really just a stamina-regen stat. And CON just increases hitpoints by a percentage, so low health classes benefit less from CON anyway, unless they really need the health to avoid being 2 hits away from death at full health, but there are items for that sort of thing too. Mages don't even get stamina regen from it.
