Hi friends!
We had started a PoE Playthrough, but it was on Hard. And “Hard” was just too easy. So, we’re starting on Path of the Damned now. With a main character that should be effective, and interesting to play from a tactical and a roleplaying point of view! With a view to playing even to the second part of the White March Expansion 🙂
The first Episode is currently being rendered and we’re uploading it today on the Thoughtful Gaming Youtube Channel.
Creating a Character optimized for Combat and Exploration
So, I was thinking about a Rogue – an intriguing character with the bonus to give us a good start as well – as we won’t miss a chest with such a master in mechanics. We do want a Death Godlike, for the damage bonus on enemies on their last 25% endurance. That’s when, in my experience, most enemies will trigger special abilities too, and that’s also a critical time to do damage, for example to stop that last heal the opponent is casting and to kill him right then!
So, Death Godlike Rogue it is. What about our attributes?
Might 13
That is not too shabby here, even though the interface wants us to bring this up further. But I’d rather have the flexibility of Dexterity for massive cooldown reduction or the precision of Perception which we will need on the highest difficulty just to be able to hit things reliably.
Constitution 10
We don’t want that too high, as we won’t be a tank, but being a melee character, we cannot afford to dump this stat.
Dexterity 19 (20 with Deathfire Archipelago)
To preserve our flexibility and to give us the best opportunities. Dex is so good because it raises damage by attack speed, and it also reduces any cooldown, so it’s also great for abilities, or even reloading times. Just a great stat, even more so for ranged characters, but also for us and for some synergy with Perception and its interrupt bonus.
Perception 18
We want to be able to hit things reliably on Path of the Damned difficulty. We are fighting with two weapons, delivering great damage by that (also from the enchantments) and we want them to hit as often as possible. And interruption is a great ability for a second row melee character like a rogue. We want to be able to stop things. Now we can.
Intelligence 14
We have good abilities and want to improve them a bit. Intelligence 14 is good enough for that. We’re getting attack bonuses from our abilities, so this will improve our damage more than more Points in Might. Or so we hope.
Resolve 3
Well, we just have to dump one stat. We won’t play a tank, so we’re going to suffer against melee heavy opponents attacking us, but we will use our abilities to pummel their damage, so we won’t need too much Resolve. The will save is a pity, but no risk, no reward. And we want that reward from offensive attribute points!
We want the Blinding as our first ability as I think it’s extremely powerful, and is based on the Reflex save as well, instead of the Fortitude save, so we have a chance to blind even strong melee attackers (which usually have high Fort / lower Reflex save). It’s a protection against the hardest opponents for Kevaver, really. Making them slower won’t help there as we don’t want to be a ranged attacker and don’t want to kite.
And we want him to be from the Deadfire Archipelago, for Dexterity +1, and Roleplaying fun (a seafarer seems to be always an entertaining backstory).
Roleplaying Aspects (how will we play our Rogue in the story of Pillars of Eternity)
The old Wizards of the Coast name generator gave him the name Kevaver Forgedawn. And I’m going to go with that. It’s an elven oriented name and has a nice, gothic touch to it. I’m sure there are better names though, but also many worse.
Kevaver’s alignment, in a Dungeons and Dragons sense, should be somewhere around Chaotic Neutral, with a tendency to good. He’s got a weak spot for people sharing his fate a bit, outcasts of society. He had to endure quite a bit because of his appalling looks when he was young and, reacting to discrimination, has had his share of mainstream racism and disadvantages by local authorities. He despises authority and has a secret love for anarchy. He’s a Drifter (+1 Mechanics, +1 Stealth) which also helps him as a group utility character.
He’s a bit of a romantic, and gothic Anti-Hero, though not so much as to reduce his effectiveness much. He has acquired a circle of friends, the only ones he believes he can trust, and wants to pay for their travelling to him to help him on the adventure. (We want to create a custom group, as there are enough playthroughs with the characters from the developers.) So stay tuned for other interesting characters we will create (or, in character, re-acquire). We want a bit of freshness too, and we have quite a nice bunch of fellows prepared for the adventure.
What we still need though is a name for our group of adventurers. Are they the “Renegades of Punk”? The “Masterminds of Madness”? Even the “Freedom Fighters and Friends”? What would you call them?
Have fun gaming,
see you!
Immanuel-Can
