Is there a good weapon for Aligern?

Question

I've had Aligern in my party for a while now and he doesn't seem very useful to me, which I think is because of his weapon skill.

Aligern is trained in medium weapons and has inability with all other weapon types, he also is unable to learn speed. I.e. you can neither improve his speed edge nor his speed stat pool.

Yet, the vast majority of medium weapons I found are speed based, the only non-speed based ones I can think of are his starting mace and the battleaxe, both very weak weapons.

This leaves me with the options of either

• use a good medium weapon, which doesn't appear to be a good choice, because his speed stat is so bad
• use a low quality medium weapon, which is bad, as he uses a 7 dmg weapon, while others have 15+ dmg weapons
• use a heavy weapon and just cope with the massive to-hit penalty.

Which option is best? Is there a good might or intellect based medium weapon in the game? If so, where can I find it?

Answer 1

tl;dr don't bother with Medium Might weapons for Aligern after Sagus Cliffs - use Heavy Might or Light Intellect weapons instead

Sadly, T:ToN is awfully unbalanced in this aspect; most of the good weapons are either Speed-based or Heavy & 2-H. Thus, with Aligern, you can take one of three possible roads:

1. (not recommended) use Aligern as a mixed mage/fighter, and stick strictly to Medium/Might weapons - that'll leave you with Battleaxe bought ASAP in Circus Minor (7+2*3=13 damage with 3 Effort+Edge) for the majority of the game, and with Temporal Hammer (16+2*6=28 with 6 Effort+Edge) in the game's ending. That, as you have already noticed, will make him really lacking in the midgame. Sadly, there simply ain't anything better available in this category (see 3. for possible solutions).

2. (not recommended) use Aligern as a support healer/buffer/damage tank only, ignoring the fact he's a battle nano at all. This will make the damage output of the team very low, making the fights long and tedious, especially if you have Rhin in your party.

3. (recommended) use Aligern as a mixed mage/fighter, get him 4 Might Edge and put all Pool into Intellect, and ignore his Medium Weapons preference, while respecting him as a Might/Intellect hybrid. Since he's severely penalised in Speed (both in terms of Pool and of Edge), you'd either have to use 2-H (no shield!) Heavy Might weapons (i.e. in rough order of appearance, Quickice Axe, Runic Blade of Tol Danor & Galvanic Hammer) - you'll get the penalty for Heavy Weapons, but with 4 Might Edge, a decent Might Pool and Aligern's Combat Magus, you'll easily get to 100% to-hit - and/or Light Intellect weapons: Whispers and, later, Ecstasy Paralyzer; don't invest into Intellect Edge, since the Intellect weapons suck in endgame - your Intellect Pool should be enough, giving you a nice bonus to Willpower in the meantime. That'll get you into 20-ish damage bracket easily, not including the bonuses from Artifacts, Tattoos and, possibly, Eyes of the Finite - which can drag you into 30-ish and beyond. In the endgame, switch to Temporal Hammer, and be happy with your very own Battle Mage^TM kicking asses all around.

Answer 2

First of all Aligern has an unique "Living tattoos" skill that makes him better on repetitive actions - each consecutive heal/damage/cast will be better than the last one in chain. This makes him a very good tank/healer (especially if you take in consideration his later skills) because you can either make him soak (and heal himself) the damage or simply keep healing your party members, but indeed not a very good damage dealer, that is unless you make him focused ONLY on combat (using any other type of action would negate the Living Tattoos bonus).

Example of useful medium weapon that uses Might instead of Speed is the Battleaxe:

That you can find at vendor at Circus or at the the trader Tantalum in the Valley of Dead Heroes. Nothing fancy, but it is available early and it would cover the low Speed stat that he would have to toherwise use.