Boeroer

It's not regeneration of resources per se which breaks the game. Else Cipher, Chanter and Monk would break it all the time. It's the very special situation where the replenishment effect restores an ability that prolongs the replenishment effect. Divine Retribution is totally fine. I would even argue that Rogue and Ranger desp. need some form of resource replenishment at higher levels to keep up with the aforementioned classes that already have replenishable resources.

If you don't want to use Empower to boost spells then by all means pick Bloodmage. In that case it's strictly superior. Doesn't matter if multiclass or single class. Helwalker/Bloodmage is doable but I wouldn't dump CON too much because at 10 wounds you can one-shot yourself with Blood-Sacrifice. Concelhaut's Draining Touch Corrosive Siphon is great in the earlier stages and later, once you get Wall of Draining you just need some good source of healing-over-time to be safe (Wall of Draining will prolong that). Blood Sacrifice generates a hell lot of wounds at higher levels. An very potent combo is Fighter/Bloodmage once you get Unbending: because Wall of Draining will not only prolong the Unbending status itself but also every instance of healing-over-time you get when you receive damage. That can lead to some hundreds to thousands of HP regenerated every 3 seconds. You become unkillable (save for one-shots), can cast Blood Sacrifice without risk at any time and recast Wall of Draining and all other spells endlessly. I personally enjoy SC Bloodmages most at the moment. But I also had great Geomancers, Battlemages, Sages, Spellblades and so on. So just go with what speaks to you most.

I do skip one or two or even all DLCs in a playthrough from time to time - once I hit lvl 20 the urge to go further may evaporate because I have proven to myself that character idea X works well - and that's it. So yeah: why not leave them out? I mean if one has already played them before and knows the content there's no big loss (unless you desperately want to use a certain item from the DLCs).

That's all somewhat correct, but the biggest problem is that most players will play a RPgame once - and if they even finish it that's unusual. So if you introduce elements like you suggested then there is the real danger that players form a party that doesn't work in some situatios. This might lead to frustration. Giving every class some form of single target dmg, AoE etc. and balancing all classes makes this less likely. So that's good for one-time players. But it's also good for players who replay often because you can build a class in many different ways that are still viable. What might be lacking is uniqueness and distinction then. I personally don't think that's a problem in Deadfire but it surely is the case that you can play the game successfully with any party composition. Which might feel more... mishmashy (is that even a word?). More little gimmicks that value unique aspects of the different classes would have been welcome though. Like getting rid of that cursed item without having to search a priest but have one yourself and whatnot Also giving parts of the game which are not combat more room and more interesting mechanics would be awesome. I personally don't like puzzles too much, but a few more could be nice in general I would assume. Deadfire (and PoE) don't seem to provide a nice "framework" for those out-of-combat things which you do in TTRPGs mostly (where only a small part is combat usually).

Praise to Wael, patron of the utterly confused. Behold his divine workings, admire her smooth subtlety, praise its encompassing perception and embrace their multifarious goofyness.

I don't really understand what's happening there. Why is the game skipping the enemies' turns (or not ending your turn)?

Good idea actually. Because I thought about how a nerf of Brilliant (+3 PL or whatever) would nerf the whole Tactician Subclass too much. But this way it's still great for non-caster classes as second class and okay for casters as second class. Power Pool classes don't have any prolonging abilities afaik so they can't turn Brilliant into an endless resource generator "for free".

I personally would always pick Balanced Shield: +1 Deflection per Wound, +1 Reflex per Wound instead of Outward Spikes: 20% Chance on being missed by a Melee attack to strike back instantly Because Outward Spikes is not a Full Attack like Riposte but pretty weak actually. Also defense bonuses have increasing returns - and having +10 deflection and +10 reflex (which stack with everything) is pretty great. The other options "Precision Striker" is not strictly better than "Pugilist" but I'll still take the first. Note that Tuotilo's bash itself counts as unarmed attack so it profits from both. I often use Swift Flurry and Precision Striker can help with that. Also helps to apply afflictions more reliably and helps to crit with Stunning Surge more often. +10% additive dmg bonus from Pugilist is not breathtaking. It simply means +1.65 dmg per hit with Monk/Monastic fists and +0.9 dmg per hit with Tuotilo's Palm. To me +5 ACC is more useful in general. But as I said there's not that much of a difference.

This is also why publishers/developers try to avoid releasing a game at (roughly) the same time as a direct competitioner.

Yes. It is wrong. I mean what were you thinking? It's obviously wrong... so so wrong... There are no transgender characters in Deadfire. Did you confuse "bisexual" and "transgender"? There's an early option to tell him that you are not interested. Pick it and he will stop to hit on you immediately and will never try again. Maybe there was too much curiosity on your part so you missed it? Lets do a test: Let's imagine Tekehu was a pretty girl, let's name her Brunhilde. Brunhilde: "Hey ekt0! Are you dating anyone?" etk0: "Uh yes, I'm dating Peggy from accounting." Brunhilde: "Oh too bad - I wish I had met you earlier, tehehe." *wink-wink" Would you imply that this is sexual harassment? If your answer is "no" then you are applying double standards. If your answer is "yes" then I'm asking myself how you want to achieve any sexual intercourse with another person without the help of Tinder... in addition maybe have a talk to somebody who actually got harassed - to put things in proper perpective. PS: I know: don't feed the troll. But I can't help it: I will take every opportunity to post some gifs of The Rock.

Of course Brilliant itself is not OP - as long as you assume that is has a finite (and not too long) duration. Salvation of Time itself is not OP either obviously: +10 seconds of any benefical effect is nice but really not jawdropping. It's the combination of both: A "replenish ability uses over time" (Brilliant) + B "extend time" (Salvation of Time) = C) "replenish ability uses, including the ones that extend time for replenishment" (infinite resource replenishment). It's a bit like recursion. You have to change either A or B to prevent C from happening. Doesn't really matter which one (if it's only about the outcome). However, judging from a software engineer's perspective I wouldn't want to introduce exceptions like "replenish ability - but only if that ability isn't x,z, or z". It's not a robust approach and it's also not easily explained to the player. It's more robust, systemic and straightforward to remove Brilliant's replenishment over time. Of course that's mostly helpful when there's still changes/additions to the system which is not the case atm. But still... bad practice imo. Besides that: how would you want to implement what you suggested? Brilliant is not refilling SoT/WoD directly. It merely restores spell uses for the respective spell tier. How would you make sure that all spells of that tier can get cast again after Brilliant got applied - but NOT WoD or SoT? Sounds very complicated rather than pretty simple - but maybe I'm missing something.

Yes, obviously some combos are more potent than others and are breaking the balance more obviously than others. I was speaking more generally about how the balance of any economy breaks down as soon as you turn something that's limited into "unlimited" or "endless". Thus it's not very logical to introduce something like that into a system you want to be balanced. Unless there are other benefits that outweigh breaking the resource economy of course.

Didn't know that. Cool fix!

It can't be done with Megabosses in place because they become nearly impossible to do. Same with the Ultimate. It would have been smart to fix this BEFORE those things came up. It would have been smart AND easy then. Now it's impossible to do without taking Ultimate or Megabosses out. Which is not feasible.

You only need any healing effect over time (like Minor Lay on Hands from Healing Hand gloves) and Wall of Draining + Bloodmage. Then you are already breaking the resource economy badly because your healing will get prolonged - which makes the use of Blood Sacrifice risk-free - which leads to more casts of Wall of Draining. Everything that's turning a limited thing into an infinite one breaks the balance. Like Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy are completely OP if you are only willing to wait. If somebody woul make a mod where you can "wait until" in combat mode (or introducing a superfast combat time lapse option) it would be more obvious that they are broken. Only the tedium of waiting "balances" them.

You get asked a bunch of questions about you choices in PoE (some go into fine detail) and I think it's good enough. That "generator" asks the same things that the import would extract from your PoE-savegame anyway - so I suspect the resulting dataset would even be identical.

That is not logical. Like saying: "Exterminating measles will make chickenpox more deadly". Maybe you mean that if you remove Brilliant's resource replenishment then Bloodmage will be the only thing left that breaks resource economy and thus will have more appeal to powergamers - or something along the lines. Which would be correct. But yeah - Bloodmage + Wall of Draining (you need to combine both things to break the resource economy of a Wizard) is broken as well. A solution would be to only allow Blood Sacrifice a certain number of times per encounter or to alter Wall of Draining so that it's proloning effect has a rel. low cap or gives a flat duration bonus like Salvation of Time. I would prefer the first one. You'll trade the ability to empower spells for Blood Sacrifice which will allow you to refresh resources more often than Empower would (but not infinite times). Megabosses are only a very small (and optional) part of the game and are made for 0.x% of players. Also they're kind of a PR stunt. Same as the Ultimate. This should not be a reason for messing up the resource economy of the game (or for not fixing it) for over 99% of all players. Combining prolonging abilities with endless resources is clearly a broken mechanic. You shouldn't design encounters or challenges to justify that brokenness - but rather fix the break and design encounters accordingly then.

@Rimiu: yes, German expat in Romania. Soon to return to Berlin though (June 15th). I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus). Anything that's not obviously destroying the resource economy. I thought they got it when they started to nerf the Chanter invocation which originally applied Brilliant and now only adds +1 resources instantly (can't prolong that) - but Ancestor's Memory and other sources of Brilliant are still in, so...

I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus). Anything that's not obviously destroying the resource economy. I thought they got it when they started to nerf the Chanter invocation which originally applied Brilliant and now only adds +1 resources instantly (can't prolong that) - but Ancestor's Memory and other sources of Brilliant are still in, so...

Same - except the profanity and ranting and blaming players for sharing stuff. Brilliant is the most broken thing. And if you (as a designer) can't immediately see the gamebreaking combination of Brilliant and any duration boosting ability such as Wall of Draining and Salvation of Time then you have "tomatoes on the eyes" as we Germans say. Wall of Draining itself also broke (even without Brilliant) as soon as the Bloodmage was introduced.

On Ultimate it will not. Also you can just start the encounter with Lover's Embrace - so it won't stop if you become invisible.

I don't think that was the only reason though.

I think they tried to do the "viral" marketing since it's cheaper but can have great effect. That's only my guess though. I mean that's also the publisher's job, isn't it? But somehow it wasn't and the whole campaign never left Twitter as far as I can tell. And you had to follow Obsidian or WorldOfEternity in the first place to even catch that. Maybe also media wasn't as eager to report about it as they were with PoE. And don't underestimate the publicity effect of Kickstarter (compared to other crowdfunding platforms).

Yeah - also the bear form/Paladin multiclass (especially Goldpact) has awesome AR (with 0 recovery penalty) and deals good dmg per hit as well - because of the dual lashes on claws (Wildstrike + Eternal Devotion). You can use Hylea's Talons for more lashes. The low recovery penalty also makes casting Inspired Beacon worthwhile (with Sacred Immolation + Nature's Terror).

Doesn't Brilliant Departure also trigger Brilliant Tactician? Like Shadowing Beyond (with a Tactician/Rogue) does?