Voss

The debate seemed to be solely in Thaos' head, and went something like this: If they didn't commit atrocities to create and spread the faith of their created gods, then people would... commit atrocities. I've never even vaguely understood how his logic worked. As far as every Eoran bar about a dozen know (you and your party), there is no debate. The gods have been there for recorded history [but a lot of Eoran history has been... unrecorded and actively redacted. With blood and body counts] The real effects seems to be this: once upon a time before they made gods, the Wheel and everything (life, death and rebirth) happened naturally. Now that the gods are around they've got their hands on the Wheel and... well. Their individual intentions and purposes with it seem to be a varying levels of nefarious, and certainly in PoE1, people suffered for it. See Woedica and Ondra specifically, either having her chief minion mass murder children to empower her, or dropping moons on civilizations because knowing history is apparently awful.

Oh yes. Aromantic is the term for folks who aren't interested in romance. Asexuals just aren't interested in the sex part. I know absolutely nothing about what you are talking about But I am going to ask questions to learn more. That's not falling on a LGBTQ spectrum is it? Like I would be straight but only interested in sex. Or homosexual but only interested in romance. That's not my sexuality it's more like a behavioral choice? Like just to me it seems like aromantic is code for someone with a form of sex addiction. And if not how would you distinguish between sex addiction and aromantic? What? Oh, no. You're jumping to pretty much the exact opposite end of things. Someone who's asexual doesn't have interest in sex. Generally when people use 'aromantic' they mean someone who isn't interested in sex OR romance. No dates or late nights cuddling on the couch or whatever, but also not mindless boning. They've friendzoned the world (if they're social) or tend to be work/project focused (if they're not) Think of it as more like the vegan/vegetarian spectrum. One is excluding more things than the other.

The precise mechanics, no. What I paraphrased is from the description, which just flatly states No guesswork, but little idea how often it will happen, which is pretty inline with how a lot of the ability descriptions are written.

Ranger/rogue looks quite good to me. It gives the ranger a lot of the solid attacks the class is simply missing. If you just put points into the companion (which is the only functional part of the ranger class, IMO), you can multi with pretty much anything. The beast goes and does whatever while the ranger focuses on throwing the other class abilities.

There is a chart on the wiki. A lot of stuff is currently in flux there (updates from Cohh's early access stream), but this chart looks current https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextralife.com/Classes scroll down a bit to power sources and power level

Nope, nope, nope. Just got spoiled on one of the NPCs. Never taking that one.

... it's a sequel. Of course most of the spells returned. [As have most of the melee abilities, if you're really paying attention.]

Erm I believe you are mistaken on this point, unless my information is outdated. My understanding of it is that single classes get a new ability every level, and gain a power level every two levels. Multi classes gain an ability every level, and TWO abilities every three levels, one for each class, when they go up in power level. This means that multiclass characters do end up with more abilities, and it also means that you can't pick a multiclass character and then only pick abilities from one class, you'll need to pick one from your other class at least once every three levels. Yours is outdated. Single class also get extra abilities- each time they reach a new power level (past first). [so, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 16th, 19th] This means they start slightly behind [start at first level with 1 ability vs 1 plus 1 abilities], but catch up [at 7th] and eventually pull ahead [9th, though they're briefly equal again at 10th]

Ciphers do have a couple spells that drain others and buff themselves. One for armor and another for accuracy and all defenses. Both are very good.

Nope. Class decisions (for companions or main character) can't be changed. There is a big warning and everything.

Don't forget Time Parasite on the Ascendant. Cut casting times in half to pack in more free spells. I'm curious to see how big an Ascendant's AoE can get with the Shared Nightmare passive. +1% per focus... 285% total at 20th level (with the +10 focus perk)? That sound about right?

That would require someone acknowledging asexual people exist. Current culture is a bit too sex obsessed for that.

He did. They weren't... yet. [Well, he did get a food bundle that was god-themed according to the one he chose to get a blessing from] It definitely tracks a bunch of stuff, however. Importantly, the save is imported in game, after the intro and some initial dialogue, not through the menu. If you want to _create_ a custom backstory, that's done through the menu, but then loaded in game like a save. Picking a pre-created package can be done in either place.

Did fighters get a new ability? I don't remember any reference to Penetrating Strike at level 3 (Full attack, +4 Pen, +25% damage)

I'd rather just burn through the resource pool and refresh it. All or nothing sits poorly with me. Though... a high level cipher can just give out empower points.

'Lesser sneak attack' isn't a thing this time around, AFAIK

Xoti and Pallegina are pretty obvious, since they're the only companions (or kicksides) that can even be priest or pally. Pallegina can also do the chanter thing too, which seems useful with the smaller party size. That seems sufficient to me. Personally, while I get why they only have one ranger (effectively two characters), one priest and one paladin was a weird decision, especially given how differently the variations can play.

He tends to upload everything to YouTube. But he does cut up the stream into smaller bits and its probably a long enough segment that it will be most of a video.

Wrong. People on this forum give overpenetration WAY more importance than it has.Josh said overpenetration isn't a necessary part of this armor system and merely serves as a bonus for those who managed to stack so much PEN. Fun fact: IRL overpenetration is bad. In PoE2 it's good Eh. Josh is largely wrong. While it isn't necessary (which is a weird stance to take - sure it isn't necessary, but it is a deliberate design choice), it can happen often, even without 'overstacking' pen. A warhammer crit build will regularly over pen ALL armor, and finding ways to get reliable hit to crit conversion isn't exactly hard. Now, if you do want to stack pen, keep in mind a fair few melee abilities simply grant bonus pen, and several classes can mess with AR and\or pen with minor investment. (Cipher body attunement has a hilarious effect on the AR system as do chanters with Hel-hyraf, and that comes at level 1). Snapping this system in half is pretty trivial. It isn't in a good place to start with, and just using one or two innate and low level abilities allow a player to simply kick it to pieces. The sad fact is, armor as DR has been beat to death in various incarnations and variants and alternate rules for D and D (and related games). It doesn't work. It hasn't ever worked. It can sometimes act as a wall at low level, but it quickly becomes trivial to bypass or blow through. But while the PoE1 system wasn't great either, it was better than this mess. A guy with a knife or club and no bonuses at all ignores more than half the armor types. That is trivially and -obviously- wrong. Gods help you if random Joe has both.

Do you know you get to see the whole ability tree at character creation? Yes. I'm not certain of the relevance, though. The first five power levels (character levels 1-10 on a single class character) are pretty devoid of ranger abilities. Lots of companion abilities, plus marked target, wounding shot and a few upgrades. If you want the ranger to do things rather than the pet (especially damage), multiclass is the best option.

The voice actors might, since Eder (and Aloth and Iselmyr) are married to Maia, and Tekehu and Xoti are expecting a kid... So? They're actors - it's their job to portray other people, including people who are in relationships with other people. You can even see this on Critical Role - several of them had their characters enter into relationships with each other, and most if not all of those were with characters played by people other than their spouse. And they weren't particularly convincing about it. That would be the 'so.' It was either a teen dramedy 'romance' or a pro forma thing, neither of which were interesting or engaging. It will be somewhat better here, since they would have been isolated in recording booths rather than sniggering up their sleeves at each other, but expecting deep and convincing cross NPC romances is... setting up for disappointment.

I don't really agree. Given the casting and recovery timers, casters look to be relatively low micro (buff builds can be automated, while offensive Spellcasters can be ignored for long stretches), while tactical decisions for the melee characters are going to be more involved.

Personally, I'm getting the impression the Deadfire ranger has to be pet oriented (as in, the majority of ability picks serve the pet) or be multi classed. There just isn't a lot for the ranger to do in the first 10 levels or so. Mark the target is fine, but if you want real damage from the ranger, you need rogue abilities or something similar.

The voice actors might, since Eder (and Aloth and Iselmyr) are married to Maia, and Tekehu and Xoti are expecting a kid...

The Great Sword I summoned in that video was indeed very powerful, and will scale with your characters Power Level (so it will be Fine, Exceptional, etc. quality) but like @boeroer said it will probably not compete long term or in all cases with something you can find and especially enchant down the road. Also, don't forget Spiritual Weapon needs to be cast (wasting to some degree an action that could be used for something else) and while it has a decent duration, it isn't long enough for many fights, and takes a precious spell use to summon (in the case of my Cleric, I could have been using Searing Mark for example). In other words, it's just one of many tools at your disposal. Especially if something has low armor vs. Corrode (and most things do). Just hide, brigadine and scale. Breatplate and plate have Shock weakness, padded Burn and leather Freeze. So 3 of 7