Defensive stats

[Death and Drek]

I'm wondering how other A4 players allocate points in the defensive stats for their characters. From my understanding Endurance, Hardiness, Defense, and Luck are the main defensive stats with Dexterity (makes you harder to hit) and Intelligence (helps resist mental attacks) being somewhat secondary defensive stats.

 

Is it better to concentrate on one or two stats and pump them up or spread around your points evenly? What about Mages and Priests who aren't front line fighters - what stats should these type of characters concentrate on?

[Ephesos]

I find that Hardiness gets very little use in my games... I really prefer Defense and Dexterity (and thus, Parry). Spreading those skills around helps greatly.

 

That, and Gymnastics can be quite helpful.

[Alorael at Large]

Endurance increases your health, and the increase depends on your level. It's more useful in the middle and end of the game than in the beginning, but I never put more than a point or two in Endurance.

 

Defense, Dexterity, Parry, and Gymnastics are all ways of not getting hit. All of them help a great deal. The last two in particular can be used to make your characters untouchable.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't put much faith in Hardiness. To get any use out of it you need to put so many points into it that you'd be better off investing those points elsewhere.

[Death and Drek]

So far I've been increasing Endurance, Defense, Dexterity and Parry - at least for my warrior types. It's been paying off since my warriors don't get hit in melee very often, and they've been able to parry some hits as well. My mage has yet to see a single point invested in ANY defensive stat, and needless to say melee is pretty much near instant death for him.

 

What's really been chewing apart my party lately is energy attacks. So far I've been wiped about by fire breathing lizards, acid ooze creatures, and a ruby skeleton who hit me with a "rain of fire" which was an instant TPK (WTF is up with that!?!).

 

So how should I deal with this? Hardiness increases the fire/energy/cold resistance, but if it doesn't do much then what's the alternative? All the protective Priest spells seem to make you harder to hit, but I haven't found anything to stop fire/energy/cold damage, other than a few magic items...

[Fort]

Luck is supposed to have some effect on a character's resistances and defensive abilities, but I have not noticed a significant difference. Regardless, luck is expensive so a high level of it for defense might not be feasible.

 

Hardiness only slightly increases your resistances and I never found it useful. Items and traits can give you plenty of damage resistances and a few percent less damage does not seem worth the skill points it requires.

[Delicious Vlish]

Gymnastics can make your character stupidly hard to hit.

[Aoslare]

Somewhere on this board, I did out a complete explanation for the defensive effects of all of these stats.

 

Parry does not make you harder to hit, it's a separate check which is much less useful than the Dex/Gymnastics/Luck check since it does little against spells and missiles.

 

Endurance is mostly a bad deal, especially compared to the HP-boosting priest spells. Boosting resistance stats is generally not that useful. The manual actually has a good explanation of how those stats work.

[Walter]

Don't forget about riposte, which works similar to parry except you return some damage as well. Unfortunately though it is extremely difficult to make it trainable due to the large investments required. As for my mages, I found using the bonding knife, combined with augmentation and enduring armor, and some good armor boosting equipment (They have natural mage trait which lets them wear more without losing mage spells) will let them survive a few hits.

 

Oh, and there is resistance as well. Does anyone know if it has any effect other than the small elemental resistance bonuses visible in your stats screeen?

[Randomizer]

To deal with fire, energy, and cold attacks it helps to cast prismatic shield. Try to have the right defensive items like rings and necklaces.

 

I found that high endurance, around 6 to 8, will reduce most poison and acid attacks so you only get really hurt on the attack and not in the later rounds.

 

I tried a high hardiness singleton and the damage reduction was nice, but not getting hit from high dexterity and defense still is better. Even a little parry helps out.