Urocyon

Either a rogue, which I'll probably multiclass with a wizard or cipher. Or a ghost heart ranger. I like the idea of a spirit pet. Maybe my animal companion got nommed by eothas and I'm looking for revenge.

The most annoying thing about Wael is deceptive is one of his favored dispositions and one of the only (if not the only) Wael quest has an unfavorable outcome if you are deceptive.

Perhaps the weapon can part of a multi stage quest involving an individual you come to be at odds with. They don't necessarily have to be a villain, maybe just staunch competition. During what seems to be the climax of the quest, the individual's soul is sheared from their body by the actions of a mutual adversary. Feeling responsible you agree to the soul's insistence to be avenged by tethering them to a weapon. Here is where you can choose the type of weapon. The weapon levels as you fulfill goals ultimately leading to the defeat of the mutual adversary and fully powered intelligent weapon.

One of the problems I had with the stronghold quests was that I thought some of those quests sounded really fun to actually do. It would be cooler if, when I sent a character to go do it, I had the option to actually do the quest instead of waiting a few days for the result. It would be fun to go on a short quest where one of the companions was controllable like your main PC. Conversely, if they stay with the current method, maybe make results or degree of success based on who you send. Example, Unspeakable Evil v.2 is causing a ruckus. You could send Fighter Bob to face it head on resulting in the Vorpal Fang Sword. Or you could send Fizzbang the Wizard who has a really high Lore skill resulting in Monster in a Bottle.

I liked the feel of the paladins in the last game with their orders, but couldn't get into them. Their playstyle felt a little dull. With multiclassing in the expansion opening up some options, I think I'll be fine with paladins.

You could play around with the chanter multi-class skellie summon to drum up some cheap disposable flanking friends too. Of course, that talent loses it's allure after a while but might help in the early levels.

Because Eora spins 12.5% slower than Earth?

I find it annoying that if you have points in Deceptive you get dinged in the Parables of Wael quest. So as a priest following Wael, one of my favored dispositions is Deceptive. Wael tells me to hide his scroll. Being the good priest, I do what he says. Get back to Grimda, another of Wael's faithful. When I tell her Wael told me to hide it, she says I'm a lying liar that lies and that I should go pound sand. Getting penalized for playing the class like he is supposed to be played (unless you want to weaken your Holy Radiance) in one of the few quests directly involving his deity seems wrong lol.

Things I would like to see: 1) Classless system like they are proposing for Tyranny. This should make for some interesting character builds. You could do it to some degree in PoE but it felt sort of forced sometimes. 2) The ability for everyone to choose a deity of worship (or the option to not) particularly for conversation options and for character backstory. For instance, I think it would be fun to play a spellcasting rogue Wael worshipper. As it is right now, I just make a wizard, give them the baby sneak attack and use head cannon. Would be nice to fill that out a bit. 3) Priest faith determines spell lists. I want more variability in spell options for priests depending on deity choice. We have a little bit of that in PoE, but I think going a bit further would make it more rewarding and increase replayability. 4) Enchantable headgear. They have some really cool headgear that doesn't get used too much because it doesn't anything. 5) Godlike improvements. Most of their racial abilities aren't too great or interesting. We don't need to be crazy powerful but little reworking is in order, especially if they are still going to be helmless. 6) Cleared zone respawn. It's kind of boring that once you kill everything in a zone, it's empty beyond the occasional bounty. I'd like to see some respawning mechanic. It would be slow enough that it doesn't become burdensome. It could even be that once you clear a zone, maybe some non-hostile NPCs move in that can give quests. Something to add life to cleared zones. 7) Reasonable stat dialogue options. I would like to see more dialogue options in the 12 to 13 range. Negative dialogue options based on low stats. Maybe having that 4 Resolve means your only option is to pay a hefty fee to cross that bridge because you are so weak willed the bandits walk all over you. As far as where to next, I want to kill sea monsters in the Deadfire Archipelago.

Here's what I think regarding skills. They should provide some quality of life benefits while simultaneously providing another dimension for roleplaying Stealth: 1)If they can uncouple stealth so that it is independent for each character, I would be fine with the skill. I would suggest having Stealth allow for restealthing in combat but that would break the game and trivialize encounters. 2)Additionally, Stealth, like any other skill, should have some dialogue/cut scene options. Maybe Stealth can include sleight of hand so that it is easier to incorporate into dialogue. Lore (in addition to scroll use): 1) Creatures can be divided into tiers/levels. You would need a certain Lore level or above to be able to unlock Bestiary entries for experience. This would help slow down experience a little. 2) Give a chance to reduce enchantment, potion, and scroll making costs. The chance would be based on the level of enchantment, potion, etc. Maybe 2 percent per level of Lore dividing by level of enchantment. So a Lore 5 means 10% chance for a Level 1 enchantment, 5% for level 2, etc. Mechanics: With the ability to open locked doors and chest, disarm traps, find cool stuff, and place traps effectively, Mechanics is fine. As with any skill, adding Dialogue options would be nice though. Survival: I like a lot of the OP's suggestions. To this I would add 1) Though it is currently not something in game, players should be able to get ambushes by hidden mobs. Spiders might drop from trees, brigands may be hiding in bushes, will o'wisps may be invisible. Survival would allow players to avoid some of these encounters. Survival would be compared to the mobs stealth. If you beat the Stealth score, can see the mob before it attacks (like traps) so you can avoid/prepare. If not, you get jumped and maybe get afflicted with a short duration daze. May be able to work in the reverse with player Stealth.

Well, it is if you want to use the Backstab ability. That requires you to be hiding or invisible. Sneak Attack, on the other hand, just requires the target to be flanked or have any one of a handful of status effects affecting it. Why would you be backstabbing with melee weapons, though? If you initiate with your rogue, you're an idiot, and you deserve to have your leather-clad ass tied up in Engagement and die. And if you're ranged, you don't need nearly as much Stealth. Edit: It should be said, though, that if someone does want to backstab in melee, you'll probably need a lot of Stealth at higher levels. I was merely responding to the poster's comment because it seemed like they were confusing Sneak Attack and Backstab. I wasn't suggesting that melee backstab was a particularly good idea just that backstab requires stealth/invsibility, which requires the rogue to act first. Now with that said, it might be interesting to play around with a rogue with backstab, high stealth, a boatload of deflection and riposte. If things get bad, pop a invisibility or cast withdrawal

Well, it is if you want to use the Backstab ability. That requires you to be hiding or invisible. Sneak Attack, on the other hand, just requires the target to be flanked or have any one of a handful of status effects affecting it.

In regard to the initial post, what is the rogue dps using the arquebus and what is the ranger dps using the warbow? Seems kind of like an apples to oranges comparison at the moment.

Some things I'd like to see in the game have mostly to do with the dialog: 1) Allowing non-priests to pick a god. This would open up some interesting roleplaying directions and allow non-priests to choose those dialog options. Priests would still be the only class to get bonuses/negatives from going against the dispositions of their god. I think it would be cool to roleplay as a rogue who worships Wael and uses their talents to find secrets or a Skaen worshiping cipher who uses his talents to subvert people. 2) More racial, paladin order, and priest dialog options. 3) Tone down the stat requirements for some of the dialog options a little bit. Or at least vary it up a bit more. Stats like Resolve and Might seemed to have been used a lot more than other stats and when stat dialogue options appeared they tended to be a little high for some of the conversation. 4) Rare instances where you need a combination of stats and abilities to be able to choose a dialogue option e.g. Lore 5 and a minimum Intelligence of 15 for a hard to succeed option. In addition, I'd like to see 1) Racial talents. Maybe a talent that makes a Fire Godlike's ability trigger sooner but at some cost or gives gives a per rest/encounter ability so that you can get a little more interesting class/race combinations. 2) More abilities that force disengagement from an enemy so the player party can get make use of that mechanic. As it is, you can knock someone down or whatever to be able to get away. However, I'm talking about forcing an enemy to flee so that you get a free hit. 3) Buffs that act as aggro magnets. For instance, a druid might cast a spell "Aggressive Pheromone" on the tank. Adjacent enemies are driven mad and turn their attention to that character for X seconds allowing previously engaged characters to get away without provoking a disengagement attack. The cipher version might be "Illusory Vendetta", enemies see their most hated foe standing where the character is and disengage their current target to take revenge. 4) Enchantable hand wraps for monk unarmed and "monk" armor that doesn't look like plate. Maybe something like mystical tattoos or imbuements. The character would appear appear shirtless but with a couple cool looking marks that act as armor. It would even look great on barbarians and druids. In a similar vein, face slot war paint or something like vitaar stuff Qunari wear in Dragon Age. 5) I really won't mind a necklace slot and a cloak slot 6) Making paladins less of a drag to play 7) More and cooler looking clothing options. Some of those clothes look pretty garish. That's all...I go play now