Boeroer

Ah, ok. Yes, this could also work. I guess they just wanted another value to play around with, since that might be easier to tune up and down once you have it (I mean from a coding and testing perspective). As I said: if you have a seperate value instead of a class-level-malus on abilities (so to speak) you can alter that value more easily not only while balancing everything,, but also later during the game when it comes to buffs and afflictions. This seems to be easier than doing stuff like D&D's level draining for example? Instead of tuning down all abilities for a short amount of time or instead of lowering the actual level you can just lower Power Level. But your example on Empower also makes sense of course. I guess general balancing of abilities in regard to single class/multi class could be easily done without such a concept of power levels and also the empower function on abilities would not need it. They originally introduced Power Levels when they still tried to build a multiclassing system where you could decide which class you level on each level-up. So you could have picked 1 level of rogue just in order to get Sneak Attack and then 19 levels of cipher. Power Levels were supposed to balance those obvious picks. So I believe when they changed to the actual multiclassing system Power Levels just stayed because they proved to be convenient and the concept was already build in. Pure speculation on my part though.

PoE: Start a game. Roll a priest of Eothas. Go to Gilded Vale and spreak to Edér. Get the dialogue option "Who's Eothas?". Ermmm...

Another two handed ranger focused on synergies between ranger and animal companion. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83435-class-build-riptide-the-pit-fright-dps-offtank-melee-ranger-double-team-supreme/ It's a bit old but still perfectly valid. Just use it as inspiration or so.

@Gromnir - I know Led Zeppelin is very restrictive when it comes to their IP. Maybe those vids are geoblocked or something. Because I can see all the other ones you're posting, only the Zeppelins' are not available. But nevermind, I know the song.

I hope there will be "Strange Mercy" again for Kind Wayfarers again...? In the current state of the beta paladins are great damage dealers. So the "kill for heals" approach might be way better than in PoE1. Still sad to lose Wrath of the Five Suns I guess.

Sure, I'm basically an addict.

Ha! Welcome back.

The hand mortar of Serafen was mentioned several times in the Q&A sessions so I thought it's not that much of a spoiler anymore. Maybe a half-spoiler still. Sorry if it was.

Hm... hm... I see. And how do you feel about it?

Song for the Troubadours out there:

Both Led Zeppelins are not working here (Romania). It says "Not available".

Speaking of mortar: did you guys know that Assassinate works with explosives?

Yes, she is quite nice. I also like Wrath of the Five Suns very much.

Howdy! No, only the sword. If you have both proficiencies (for sword AND dagger) you also get two buttons: one for each modal. So if you'd turn on both modals you would gain +2 PEN with the sword only and suffer a deflection penalty, but at the same time you would lower the damage of the dagger and get a bonus to deflection again. All in all you'd have +/-0 deflection, +2 PEN with the sword and a longer recovery phase after strikes with the dagger. Hope that helps. I'm not quite sure if the deflection malus stacks if you dual wield swords with the modal active... didn't test that. Or if the deflection bonus of daggers stack. They should...

Yeah... Maybe you should do a forum poll?

That's because the first time you came in contact with a paladin was with D&D and that ruined the whole paladin theme for you. I think it's better to have a more "open" approach to paladins. They can form an order of zealous god-followers, but they can also form an order of zealous contract-followers. By the way the Goldpact Knights also kind of follow the teachings of a god: Woedica is called Oathbinder and punishes people for breaking oaths. Goldpact Knights always keep their oath once the oath/contract is signed. Maybe a lot of them follow her teachings. So it also depends which gods there are. Imagine a paladin of Skaen: not very paladin-like in terms of D&D and friends. In PoE, what all paladins have in common is zeal. The reason behind their zeal can be multiple things and I think that makes paladins in general less one-dimensional than the usual holy warrior theme which is boring for me. I mean they can be and thus the common D&D-Paladin fan can build such a holy warrior, but they don't have to be, which opens more choice for players with a more differentiated taste when it comes to zealous characters.

The last two points make sense for me. Err... I mean the rest does as well, I just wanted to say I support the last two things in particular.

If you could "define" that class level of multiclass characters is -2 compared to single class chars then there's no difference on first glance. But then you will have issues with XP gaining and some other stuff: Power Level gives you an additional adjusting screw that doesn't interfere with character level. So you can decouple things that you want to scale with level (for example enemies' level scaling) from things that you want to scale with Power Level (for example active abilities like spells). If you throw it all into the class-level pool things can get messy and obscure. I think that Power Level is an elegant solution. You can easily adjust its values without interfering with things that you want to tie to class level. You can also have things that alter your Power Level then (Empower, racial ability like Wellspring of Live, class ability like Livegiver's Spiritshift Power Level boost when casting Rejuvenation spells), certain afflictions without messing around with character level which usually entails many more things than Power Level does (like base Accuracy, health, defenses and so on).

Maybe enemies will make more use of pushing/teleporting/pulling abilities. Some already did in PoE (Monks, Shades, Specters) and people got pretty annoyed.

One of the best things PoE did was decoupling paladins from deities. The original meaning of the word paladin is "person who's close to the emperor" - which totally fits the Darcozzi Paladin. Most other (current) connotations of the word paladin (holy warrior and whatnot) came later with D&D. I'm glad that PoE didn't follow that one-dimensional and somewhat boring approach but depicted paladins as orders of warriors that are zealous and dedicated to a common goal/philosophy/whatever, but are not necessarily bound to a god. Still there are some orders who are (Fellows of St. Waidwen Martyr for example). Same with monks: not tied to certain gods at all but rather to a special philosophy. That's a good thing. Gods have their priests and that's enough in my opinion. My favorite orders are Darcozzi and Bleak Walkers by the way - mainly because of their special talents. Darcozzis are great ACC supporters and Bleak Walkers are among the best alpha strikers.

I played a bit with it and you can completely prevent an enemy from using active abilities as soon as they need some time to activate (mostly spells). It's kind of a class for special occasions only, but it can come in handy. The malus of halved frenzy and such is a bit stupid though.

There IS a hand mortar in Deadfire. The official companion Serafen will have one.

It's a fire that broke out after your dad fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV with his cigarette still burning.

Eh - I just realized that Torrent of Flame from the Belt is a spell bind, not a spell holding. So of course it has friendly fire. Stupid me...

Please: Henry Rollins cameo?