Boeroer

Right. That first part also leads to: enfeeblement prolongs its own duration right away (by the way).

That's right. Fists with Transcendent Suffering/Monastic Unarmed Training scale with power level. But Monastic Unarmed Training uses the PL-progression of single class (maybe oversight) even if you are multiclassed - so even there Single Class vs. Multiclass doesn't matter. With a monk it does matter though. By the way: Ranger's Animal Companion also scales with char level, not Power Level.

Summons scale with character level, not Power Level. So summons of any kind (weapons, creatures) are no problem with multiclassing.

Yes, Phantom is one of the easiest ways because its AoE is so huge. Battlemage can also use Chillfog.

Cool. I haven't checked everything but just flew over it - but it looks good. Two things I noticed that aren't quite correct: Gipon Prudensco and Nomand's Brigandine don't give immunity to engagement but instead give immunity to disengagement attacks. This sounds like the same but it isn't: While immunity to engagement prevents enemies from engaging you entirely, immunity to disengagement attacks lets enemies still engage you (and thus you might still profit from stuff like Entonia Signet Ring) and they will also do disengagement attacks if you break engagement - but all those attacks will be turned into misses. This opens up some synergy with abilites like Imagined Pain, Riposte and so on but also with item enchantments or modals like Offensive Parry (Whispers of the Endless Paths) or the small shield modal for example. I could't find Edér's armor in the list (maybe I missed it). It provides immunity vs. Reflex attacks via the enchantment Veteran's Maneuver. This can be used with stuff like Keeper of the Flame + Whispers of the Wind + Imagined Pain (Imagined Pain gives 1 wound per miss against you, the flame AoE of the flail will also hit you but targets reflex so it gets turned into a miss -> +1 wound). --- The pet's name is Ooblit, not Ooblist. I couldn't find Harley (the dog pet). It raises ranged damage by 10% - but actually works with all sorts of damage that's not melee, including spells. Several pets give increased AoE size as secondary, party-wide effect (like Loki does as primary, but to everybody and weaker - I think 5% or so). As I said I just flew over it...

No, it doesn't properly stack it seems. I guess the longer push from Force of Anguish overrides the shorter one from the staff, no idea. At least nothing noteworthy happened when I tested it. Also Clear Out + Ll's Staff doesn't do multi-push it seems. One weird effect I noticed: if you use knock-ups with the staff ( for example Skyward Kick) there will be no knock-up animation: the target will stay targetable, but the knockup "CC" effect will still get applied to the enemy for a few secs (is hard-cc'd then as if prone but really isn't). I guess the push animation overrides the knockup animation. This can prevent the usual problems where allies try to attack the enemy but will miss because it gets knocked up (and becomes untouchable while in the air). I also tried a Rogue with Arterial Strike and pushed the melee enemies away from me. Most of them are stupid enough to try to reach me again... and again.

PS: if you summon an Essential Phantom after you sumoned the staff you can play tennis with the enemies as your ball.

Please report how it went. Funny side effect: if you use the Helm of the White Void then every attack you do with the staff gets +10 accuracy (Rymrgand's Influence) - because the staff causes a hobble effect with every strike. That's a really nice bonus to have.

Hm... not such bad idea imo. That way focus generation (and spell spamming) will stop, but in a different way it's still useful to be a "tanky" Psion in melee then. Stackable bonus defenses are hard to come by and have increasing returns, so they are valuabe. A the same time you can't make full use of your defining ability (to cast cipher powers). I like it!

Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instrumen of Death

Jut checked the wiki - which also doesn't mention the healing - then checked in the game and it is exactly as you said, @thelee. Maybe the healing was added with a patch, no idea. Anyway - updating the wiki now... https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Nature's_Bounty_(Deadfire_item)

Huh? Really? I haven't used it for ages and thought it only did said buffing. Good to know it also heals (that's better than I thought).

In this case that "only" means longer duration. The effects (+action speed, +2 MIG and PER) do not scale. Edit: that was partially wrong, it also does +20 health (base) which gets boosted by Alchemy. Thanks @thelee

I compiled such a list of games: Yes, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. Nobody said differently. But it's another thing to assume that just because I feel a certain way a lot of people should share that sentiment. Color me interested. How many? In this forum, on Twitter and on Discord I didn't even read once about this problem. There were many complaints, some occured frequently (loading times, performance, main story arc, nerfs etc.) and some very esoteric ("not enough women smiling" wasn't even the weirdest, we had one guy who wanted a refund because there are naked butts in the game...) - but not one complaint about reused parts of the environment. But maybe I just missed other sources where this was discussed. For example I don't use Reddit or RPGCodex... My personal pet peeve with reusing stuff is that the late introduction of FullVO lead to a lot of voice actors getting "reused" for different characters in the game. Although they tried to alter their voices as best as they could I can tell all VAs who are doing multiple parts because I have good ears and excellent voice recognition. When speaking to Udine after talking to Mad Morena I just cringe, but alas... The only VA who fooled me for some time (from PoE until the Engwithan Digsite in Deadfire) was Matthew Mercer who's doing Aloth AND Edér... But since I didn't read about this "problem" anywhere else I just guessed that I'm pretty alone with that. So I didn't assume that reusing voice actors for multiple chars was a huge problem in general and therefore I didn't assume that many players didn't buy Deadfire - or won't buy upcoming games - because several chars were voiced by he same person (and I can hear it and it bugs me a bit). If reusing parts of the environment or portraits is such an offputting thing that transcends specific groups of players there should be plenty of sources for that, shouldn't it? I went through the thread again and so far it was a respectful and rather carefully worded discussion - especially when considering it's an internet forum with anonymous users. It's not aggression if your claims get challenged - it's just objections. The only (passive-)aggressive part so far was that^ - since it suggests that the participants in this discussion started to behave like fanboys without any objectivity or arguments - which was not the case.

Unfortunately the duration will not change. It is determined at the time you cast the spell. But the healing ticks will indeed rise in potency. This even happens if you change MIG while the spell is active by the way - or if you add any other effect that raises healing during the duration of the HoT spell. For example when a Mercy and Kindness chant kicks in while the HoT is active. Robust's healing (10 base) does scale with PL and MIG etc. if I'm not mistaken. I'm not 100% sure if it will inherit/change with the PL of the Nature's Balm spell. Good question, would need to test this... Nature's Bounty: I guess not - but tbh I didn't really use Nature's Bounty since I usually avoid using consumables.

Until the next rest: I guess so.

It costs time. Time is invaluable once the release date comes near. At least that's the case for regular software development - but I'm fairly confident it's the same with games development. Like how much more do you think it would have cost them to prepare unique items for every passive ability? Doesn't seem much but yet they didn't do it - because something else seemed more important (at least Josh said so when asked about it in a stream). For the Community Patch mod I then created unique icons for all passive abilities - and it took me quite some time not only to draw them (that was the "easy" part), but also to check back with the others to get feedback, then alter the icons, get feedback again - and once they were all considered as good enough they weren't even in the game yet - an atlas had to be made etc., then feedback came in about how the icons looked in the actual game... and so on and so forth. Creating assets for the game and then really putting them there isn't just painting over something. It would be if one would create a game alone I guess. Anyway: if the producer deemed other things more important... then stuff has to be cut out - even if it's easy to do stuff. Nice. I have a diploma in media computer science from a German university. One of my main courses was 3D graphics and animation. I did 3D animations for commercials and presentations for a living when I was younger. The most time was spend in the feedback loop. Also the pay was pretty terrible, hehe...

How are concentration layers removed once the target receives interrupts? Is there no accessible event for that?

It's not unusual to reuse assets. As long as it's not too obvious that's okay. It cuts cost and development time considerably. It's not that easy to spot in 3D games because the environment in 3D games is not made of fixed backgrounds but composed of 3D objects. Anyway, it may well be that Deadfire's release time was approaching fast and level designers realized they didn't have enough time or budget left to create more unique assets. Such constraints may lead to the designers reusing more assets than is optimal. That's not a problem of the engine or the general method of designing the levels though. I'm pretty sure if they have had more time (and money) the artists would't have reused assets a lot. It's way more fun to create unique environments instead of reusing existing parts - but it's also more expensive. Deadfire's budget and development time got bloated a lot during development by Full VO and stuff like ship combat. It might well be that those took away considerable resources from other parts of the game.

I especially like this combo (some damage that applies over time, be it a DoT like Plague or some ticking stuff like Relentless Storm or both ;)) when going Barbarian/Shifter. Just because of Blood Thirst. At some point, while you are engaged in melee combat, some weaker enemies will start dying from the spells and then Blood Thirst kicks in and speeds up your slashing considerably which is a lot of fun imo.

Hah, how awesome!

Ouh - nice testing.

That all sounds a little bit too complicated for my taste. So far I would still prefer the crit-based approach of the CP. In addition I would propose that any interrupt (that's not countered by concentration of course) will also pause Soul Mind to tune it down a bit - also fits thematically imo. I don't dare to suggest anything that's solely interrupt based although it would be the "cleanest" solution from a systems standpoint (I would like the mechanics of the Grimpoire of Vaporous Wizardry to be applied to a Psion: damage causes an interrupt - but no pause to focus generation) because of the ability to circumvent that completely with the Fractured Casque or perma-courageous.

I guess the isometric and painted 2D background approach. Obsidian wanted a spiritual successor to IWD/BG and that also meant to somewhat capture the looks of the old infinity engine games (but with more contemporary quality of course) I guess. I don't know if it's the most gorgeous game I've ever played, but I def. like the aesthetics a lot and can't name another CRPG which I liked better in that regard. But yeah: matter of taste.

Presumably one will have more "idle time" (or less stress) when playing TB mode over RTwP (unless you pause every second and check the log - which would be tedious as hell I guess) which might lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanics. Maybe also because every single decision for action will be more important - so one will make extra sure it's effective which might motivate players to study the mechanics more thorougly. But those are somewhat different mechanics. Everything that's time-based (action speed, recovery time, durations, damage/healing over time etc.) is very different from the RTwP mode. And especially the action speed/recovery time mechanics of the RTwP modus are pretty obscurely implemented so it's extra hard to understand them properly. The TB mode makes that very easy because it's all organized in... well, turns.