Questions about making a Fighter

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Okay after having been gone from these forums for quit a long time, I am back because I installed Pillars of Eternity this afternoon.

I have been reading a bit about the game while trying not to get to much info that might spoil something. I am thinking of starting with a male Human Fighter. Now on this Wiki page ...

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Fighter

I read that the Attributes Con and Res are highly recommended with Perception as recommended for a Fighter. And from their descriptions I can certainly see that those 3 are certainly useful, but would it also not be good to pick Might once in a while?

Now from what I understand is that with this game there is no real 'bad' choice, but I am still curious about the might attribute. So is it a good idea to put most points in CON/RES and PERC with a Fighter, and on occasion a point in Might?

 

I'm still learning my way around the classes to some extent, but I believe Con, Per and Res are highlighted in order to build a strong defensive tank. If you want a heavy hitter, sure, pump Might. But if you're looking to be more of a damage dealer, other classes do that better: Barbarian or Rogue, for example.

Fighter's are by far the best tanks, so I think that is why Obsidian is suggesting that you boost those stats in particular, to maximize that capability. Might is ultimately useful for all classes, but not essential for a tank.

Hope that helps.

 

It does help, thank you Marceror. I like to play a new game first with a character that has good survivability, and to me it seems that means the Fighter. Other character types will come afterwards.

 

Yes, this.

I played a bunch this weekend and my PC is a fighter tank. By far the hardest of my team to kill. He has 12 might, 17 in Con and Resolve, I think a 14 in Perception, and Dex and Int both at 10.

My other fighter, Eder, is more my damage guy. He hits harder, but often gets his ass kicked. On my next playthrough I might make a custom Barbarian or something.

My characters are all around level 5 at the moment. So not too far in.

PRO TIP I LEARNED THE HARD WAY BECAUSE I'M DUMB SOMETIMES: Experience is gained by advancing the story and exploring, NOT by killing enemies. I seem to remember this being deliberate to discourage grinding. I cleaned out an entire castle for the experience and loot, only to find I hadn't gained a single experience point (was trying to get my party up just one more level to take on a boss). At least I got a ton of sellable loot.

 

Hey there DR. What you say about experience is true, mostly. You do gain "bestiary" experience for killing beasts that are included in the bestiary. You will gain experience for killing them until your bestiary information is fully complete for a particular beast.

You'll see a percent complete in your combat log each time you kill a monster, until the bestiary entries are completed.

You don't ever get experience for killing humans because they aren't beasts, unless of course killing said humans results in a quest advancing or completing (in which case you are technically getting quest xp, not combat xp).

 

Thank you for that pro tip Death Rabbit, I did not know that?

Also good to know, thank you Marceror.

 

Well that's just silly.

 

Early in the beta there was no bestiary xp either. Or xp for dealing with traps and locks. It was all quest based experience. There were a lot of unhappy folks, so Obsidian made some changes.

As already suggested, this was done to discourage grinding and killing everything you see to max out xp. It was also done to support Obsidian's stated goal during the Kickstarter that playing the game as a pseudo-pacifist would be viable. Not all combat can be avoided, but a lot of it can.

 

I think it's a good system. Personally, I run all my D&D/PF games without XP and it works out pretty great. Numenera, too, only awards XP for story and discoveries. It seems a lot of the modern RP systems are going in this direction and it's an excellent choice for story-driven games, even if there's plenty of fights in them.

 

Well personally I do not mind the new XP system, I never was much of grinder. I play a game to enjoy the game world ... the story and all those things, and not go through the same area over and over again.

 

My opinions are based on the fact that I played the Backer Beta and participated in the discussions on the official forum.

Monks are powerful in PoE. I am doing my first playthrough with a Monk, male, fire godlike. Chanters are another powerful class, perhaps over powerful. I play on normal difficulty with Expert mode. My Chanter companion is often left standing when the rest fall.

Rangers were considered the weakest class. I don't know if rebalancing was done for the final game but my ranger companion is holding her own. Someone in the BB found if you play the ranger as a board and sword fighter he works fine. I tried it and agree. Have the animal companion attack the same opponent as the ranger and they were good. For some reason I never did well with the barbarian.

XP is balanced to allow people to choose a more peaceful path or a more warlike one. Quests give the same XP no matter how you resolve them. This is far and I think encourages people to role play rather than power play.

You can gain XP from the Beastiary, lock picking, traps also.

 

A lot depends on how one defines "tank". Some people over on the official PoE forum seem to think that tanks are strictly defensive, to the point of building them with no intention of them having any offensive capability whatsoever (i.e. using Might as a dump stat for min-maxing). In my view, a proper tank must be able to both defend itself and deal respectable damage at the same time.

I view the all-defense, no-offense tank as a cheesey way to abuse the game's AI, which no legit GM in a pencil and paper game would allow, or would at least punish severely by having the enemies act intelligently to a character they couldn't hit no matter how hard they tried and ignore the all-defense tank and move on to attacking other targets they could hit.

As for building a legit tank, you need some points in Perception, Resolve, and Might. Odd as it may seem, points in CON and DEX aren't that critical. You don't want to use them as dump stats, because that can hurt, but holding them at or near 10 won't really hurt. Here's why.

DEX doesn't improve accuracy. It only affects Action speed and your Reflex save. Fighters, at least those you intend to eventually have in full plate armor on the front lines tend to be a bit defensive in nature, i.e. their job is to protect your squishier spellcasters. So, having a higher action speed isn't critical. Sure, you won't be making as many attacks as you might with a higher DEX, but with a limited number stat points, sacrifices must be made. And for frontline largely defensive, hold the line type of fighters, a slower attack speed isn't a major problem.

CON isn't quite as critical as it may seem. Sure, your Health and Endurance numbers won't be quite as high. But the thing that really makes Fighters tough as hell is that they regenerate their Endurance in battle. So if you're already fairly hard to hit and wearing good armor (which lowers the amount of damage you're taking), you won't see much of a difference between a moderate CON and a high CON unless you start taking major amounts of damage.

IIRC, your stats start at 10 in each. You get a total of 2 bonus stat points for your race (humans get +1 Might and +1 Resolve, for example) that show up before you apply the 15 stat points you're given to use. And you get +1 more stat point when you pick the region your character comes from (IIRC, if you come from Andyr, you get +1 to Resolve, for example).

A decent Fighter build could look like 16 Might, 12 Con, 10 Dex, 15 Per, 10 Int, 15 Res. (This is just a simple example.) This build would give you a decent amount of Might to increase your damage, a little extra Endurance, as well as +10 Deflection bonus, due to the 15's in Per and Res (+1 Defl bonus per point in PER and RES above 10). This character would have a deflection rating of 35, coming from a base of 25 for just being a Fighter and the +10 Deflection bonus from the PER and RES stats. This Deflection rating will climb as you progress in levels, and take various defensive Talents, as well as equip various items that boost Deflection. For example, by the end of the game, my pre-made NPC fighter had a Deflection slightly over 120 because of the various talents I'd chosen and items he had equipped, while at the same time leading my party in damage, though not by much. (And frankly, this NPC's stats are nothing special for a Fighter.)

 

A couple of points.

1. There's no lack of XP in PoE, since there are a lot, a LOT!!!, of side quests, like in BG2.

2. Rangers: I have no doubt that rangers can function in melee. My first PC was a Ranger. That said, the Ranger class gets a +15 accuracy bonus for ranged combat, because Rangers are designed to be a ranged combatant class.

3. Ranger animal companions: You have to be a little careful with your animal companion because if they die (get knocked out) in combat, the ranger gets a -20 accuracy penalty for the remainder of the engagement. So blindly sending your AC into melee while hanging back and peppering the enemy at range may not be the best thing to do. This isn't to say to not have your AC's fight. Just hold them in reserve for when your frontliners need help, because a -20 ACC penalty hurts.

 

With my current party most battles start like this:

1) Send the Fighter in first, using scouting mode so he can get as close to the enemies as possible before combat starts.

2) Let the rogue follow the Fighter with some distance, so he can flank the enemies which the Fighter engages.

3) Position the Ranger's animal companion between the enemies and the ranged party members (Cipher, Wizard, Ranger).

Then when combat starts, the tank will engage as many enemies as he can, and the Rogue will flank them. But if any enemies manage to get past those two and try to get to the ranged party members, I let the animal companion intercept them. Sometimes it'll get knocked out in the process, but that's still better than letting the ranged party members get attacked in melee.

Remember that any damage taken by your party members causes them to loose health which can only be restored by resting, whereas the animal companion always starts fresh for each battle, so it's "health" is a much less precious resource than that of normal party members and it's okay to be a little more careless with it.

 

A couple points.

1. When it comes to choosing weapons for a rogue, the greater the range, the better. The worst thing that can happen is for your fighter to have a ranged weapon with a greater range than your rogue and have the rogue move in front of the fighter when you're trying to get in a first volley from stealth. The enemy will then go after the rogue instead of the fighter.

Thus, I found that arming my front line fighter with a blunderbus which is the shortest range ranged weapon was actually a good thing, since it meant that he would be in front of any other party members when he fired it.


2. You make a good point about how AC's don't have that health pool to worry about. I hadn't considered that. Still, it pays to have a degree of caution with AC's because having them go down really hurts a ranger's accuracy. It's just a matter of balancing caution with the need to get the AC into the action. The way you're doing it sounds like a solid plan. Get the fighter to tie up as many foes as possible before getting the AC into the fight.

 

I agree, a tank is not just there as a punching bag but also to deliver good damage. I see them more like shock troops, hit the enemy as fast and as hard as they can ... while holding the line as long as they can so that the rest can make their attacks and all from the back.

Although I can not exactly explain why, there was something about my first Fighter that I did not like, so I restarted with a new Fighter a few days ago. I made a Wild Orlan with these Attributes.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/...fEternity 2015-04-20 14-19-49_zpsmwqracj4.jpg

Personally I think Int is the least useful for a Fighter so I picked that one as a Dump attribute. The Will saves are lower that way but that can be lessened a bit by a Talent and equipment. And there is also the passive talent from the Wild Orlans that will kick in with a Will attack.

Per and Res are actually 15, but I found "The Pilgrims Lasting Vigil +1".

 

Frankly, barbarians sound more like shock troops with their extreme emphasis on offense. Fighters seem like a "hold the line" type. They can deal good damage, but with the staying power that barbarians lack.

Been there, done that. After completing my first run with my first character, a Ranger, I've gone thru a number of characters trying to find another that I want to play through to the end. Played a cipher up thru Caed Nua, but it wasn't really getting me excited. I'm currently playing a monk, and she's interesting, though to be honest, I have almost no clue what the good talents are for monks. I'm playing it by ear, reading monk threads over on the official board to glean info.


I also have a semi-swashbuckler fighter that I've played a bit that seems interesting. But she's currently on hold while I play the monk.

Honestly, I'm not into extreme min-maxing. I currently won't take any stat below 8. But if that floats your boat, more power to ya.

And speaking of racial talents, it's my observation that some races have fairly good innate racial talents, while others have so-so ones, and others have lame ones. The Wood Elf's innate talent is excellent, at least as long as you want to play a ranged character. The boreal dwarf's talent (bonuses against 2 monster types) seems quite useful. OTOH, the regular dwarf's talent seems less than thrilling. Oh well.

 

Okay I will meet you have way then ... both are shock troops to me.

 

Everyone has his or her own play style and likes and dislikes. I consider Int very important for the player character. It gives you better dialogue options. Every attribute and talent is useful.

For a hired adventurer fighter I would go for a dwarf as you can easily up his mgt to 21. He also makes a good barbarian. Haven't tried him as a monk but I imagine the same holds. I have played a PC as a monk and he was great. A human monk.

 

I'd probably suggest a boreal dwarf over a regular dwarf. IIRC, the racial benefits are a good deal more useful, since the boreal dwarf gets a pair of racial enemy groups as its benefit (primordial and wilder, I think), whereas the regular dwarf only gets some resistances (or whatever) to disease and poison, I think.

I'm currently playing a monk ... a pale elf monk. I chose pale elf over regular elf because regular elves benefits are are wasted IMO if you're not playing a ranged combatant of some sort. OTOH, the pale elf's hot and cold DR's won't be wasted on the front lines. Might or might not get used a lot, but not wasted, I'm thinking.