thelee

Yes. Basically as you gain more power levels, all your spells gain more penetration, either because you have access to new higher level spells with greater inherent power level (from ability level bonus) or because the other spells gain a PL bonus. The PL bonus not being as large as the ability level bonus means that your most penetrating spells will generally be the highest PL spells you have though the others won't be too far behind. Though in-game, penetration values are shown correctly in the right-click pop up on spells (if you hover over it you should get a breakdown by ability level and PL), so you don't have to do the math yourself. Yes that is correct, all of it. The bonuses are additive with all other sources, if any.

As far as I can tell, no PL does not affect proficiency modals, and no empower does not alter cast time.

I updated the post with all the latest information I could find. This may be the most definitive explanation of power levels. There are probably some exceptions to the rule.

Easy enough to recreate. 1. Have a character with the "arms bearer" passive. 2. Equip a weapon there. 3. Level them up later on. 4. After you level them up, the weapon will have been unequipped and placed back in inventory. Here's a dropbox link to a save right before a level up and an output_log from right after: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3e93mbr5jseb13p/AADm2uH4dtds--zUuP3dzJFha?dl=0

Frankly, Obsidian should just re-normalize all the numbers they use to be same "unit", so we don't have to keep track of what affects "time" or "speed" or whatnot. Then we can just add up all the numbers (like pillars 1). This is unnecessarily confusing.

Swift Strikes grants +20% action [speed].But when you mouseover the recovery time of weapon, the game tries to display how much did Swift Strike affect the [time]. It converts speed coefficient to time coefficient: 1/1.2 = 0.8333. So a +20% increase in speed, corresponds to a -16.(6)% decrease in time. That makes sense for swift strikes, but I'm not crazy in thinking that that's not how dexterity is calculated, right? It should just be (1 + .03 * dex) as the coefficient? Which means the tool-tip is inconsistent in showing the effects on recovery rate and recovery time. (Wouldn't be the first time a pillars tooltip has been misleading) EDIT: the dexterity in that tooltip is at level where a coefficient of (1+x) = 1.06 versus 1/(1-x)=1.06 round to the same thing, so there's nothing inconsistent about the tooltip, potentially.

Thanks, MaxQuest. And holy large json file, Batman! TIL that vim will struggle to open a 14mb file with no line wrapping. Frankly the information you provide is disappointing, mostly because it talks about a murkiness in the game when I thought Obsidian was trying to clear all that up from pillars. So my thinking is that the way the modifiers are being combined, and with the inversion, what Obsidian is approximating is that all of these adjustments are to a rate of how quickly or slowly you move through attack frames. For all below cases I assume a 5s recovery: The example is simple with most positive cases: 5/(1 + sum(x)). +100% action speed really means we are increasing how many attack frames we process in the same time frame by +100%, so 5/(1 + 1) is how we represent that (we now have 2.5s recovery, or double speed advancing through attack frames). This is the same as dex and gunner from POE1. For net maluses, we can't just do 5/(1-x), because when we say you have +100% increased recovery, we are not saying that you take infinitely long to recover from an attack. Instead what we are saying is that +100% increased recovery means we have +100% delay between attack frames. The way you do this is 5/(1/(1-x)). We take the negative bonus (-1) and we reverse the sign so we get 1/2. Then we invert that, so that instead of increasing how quickly we are going through attack frames, we are decreasing our speed through attack frames (hence, a double-inversion of a malus). So 5/(1(1-(-1))) = 10s, or half as many action in the same time frame. So I was predisposed to thinking of maluses in terms of this thinking, where a malus means degradation in your action/recovery time (instead of action/recovery speed). MaxQuest, you've shown that for a -25% modifier, Obsidian is storing .75 as the coefficient. So OK, in your example with the car, it makes sense because .75 would literally mean -25% actions for any given unit of time. However, it is clear that in other places Obsidian do care about things being modified as an effect on time (e.g. instead of slowing down by 25%, you extend the time it takes by 25%); thanks to your spreadsheet and the .bundle file, we see that arbalest ia a .75 coefficient, but warbow overdraw is a 1/1.5 coefficient. The former directly reduces how many actions you should take by 25% (which translates to a +33% degradation in your recovery time), whereas the latter is formulated directly as a degradation of your recovery time (a coefficient of .66 or -33% action speed). That above distinction between how certain coefficients are computed just leads to a murkiness that is frustrating and requires a lot of care to pay attention to exactly what tool-tips are saying (and hoping that Obsidian was precise with their wording on each tooltip). So, one of my original points still stands though. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "double-inversion", double-inversion is not what makes things bad, because when the double-inversion is applied to something that lengthens your recovery time (warbow overdraw), it is basically a negative additive modifier to most positive modifiers which affect speed. What makes things bad are maluses that are targeting your action speed directly (like arbalest overbearing) because by their very nature they overpower identical magnitude improvements also to your action speed. Interestingly, there's a flip side here: Sure-Handed Ila stores a 1/.8 coefficient, instead of a 1.2, because I guess it is targeting giving you 20% less recovery time (effectively a 25% improvement in your action speed), instead of improving your action speed by 20% (like potions of deftness do by 15% for coeff of 1.15), so Sure Handed, too, will overweight against maluses that merely degrade your recovery speed (like warbow overdraw or armor). Something similar happens with dual-wield (given that its coefficient is stored as 1/.7 and not 1.3). (So, dual-wielding an implement with Sure-Handed will outweigh the penalty for wearing heavy armor, even though the tool-tip penalty for heavy armor exceeds a naive* sum of the tooltip bonuses for dual-wielding and sure-handed). * I use naive not to be insulting, but more in the math-y way of saying "possibly the obvious, but apparently incorrect" approach. Personally, I think we should try to spit out a list of coefficients and normalize them, or at least be explicitly clear into how they are put into the equation, because there are clearly some maluses are no different from bonuses (warbow, rapier needle, armor) and some that are significantly overweighted (arbalest overbearing but there are also bonuses that are overweighted: sure handed, dual-wielding). EDIT: i am also pretty busy the next couple of weeks, but I might take a stab at doing this when I have more time. Coefficients are just way too murky for my game-analytical needs as it stands. EDIT2: i tried to clear up terminology. It's a little confusing because it's a bit asymmetric. TL;DR: bonuses to your action speed are equally weighted to maluses to your recovery time. bonuses to your recovery time are equally weighted to maluses to your action speed. On the other hand, bonuses to your action speed are outweighed by maluses to your action speed, and maluses to your recovery time are outweighed by bonuses to your recovery time. UGH

I find power level to be extremely confusing. (Frankly, before doing in-game research and learning more about how it worked I thought it was a systems blunder by Obsidian due to how obtuse and confusing it is.) I'm posting this share my research but also gather comments on power level, because I can't find an updated recent thread that isn't locked to talk about it. I only have incomplete information from staring at combat logs and a limited set of spells/abilities, so others feel free to chime in. Power level scaling: affects all active abilities (including consumables). Weapon-based martial abilities get minimal and special power-level scaling (including special treatment by Empower, see end of post). Because weapon-based martial abilities are so special, this post will mostly focus on scaling done to other abilities. Note: this wasn't clear to me before, but adding this here -> all damage/duration bonuses you get from power level scaling are multiplicative with any other modifiers: they are applied first, and then all other modifiers are applied. What it does: for every power level you have that is greater than the native[1] power level of the spell, you get scaling bonuses. There are general rules about how spells should scale that I've found, though there appear to be exceptions. But what you see here should suffice for the vast majority of cases. [1] some classes get spells from other classes' skill trees. For example, if you have Xoti train as a priest or priest/monk, at PL3 she gets a bonus spell: "Vile Thorns." Vile Thorns is natively from the druid skill tree, and so it is treated as PL1 in terms of power level scaling. So that means at PL3 you get access to Vile Thorns and it already has some bonus damage, even though you don't have a power level higher than the power level Vile Thorns is on, because natively it is a PL1 spell, not a PL3 spell. General guidelines: First of all, tool-tip accuracy is inaccurate and inconsistent. The one you see when you right-click on an ability ignores ability and power level scaling. The one you see when you hover over the ability in your HUD ignores power level scaling, but counts ability level scaling. Anyway, regardless of power level, there is a scaling ability level accuracy bonus, which is equal to 2 * (power_level - 1) of the spell. So a PL3 spell will inherently have a +4 ability level accuracy bonus, whereas a PL1 spell will have none. There is also a scaling ability level penetration bonus, which is equal to +.5 per ability level. Second of all, the general way scaling appears to happen is, first, take the difference between your current power level and the spell's native power level. For simplicity's sake, let's just call this the "PL". (So casting a PL1 spell at PL4 you would have a PL of 3 for scaling purposes.) A. if a spell bounces or has projectiles, it gets an additional bounce or projectile every other PL. Spells used to have variable projectile scaling but it looks like that got nerfed at some point and they appear to get .5 projectile per PL. B. if a spell does damage/healing, it gets +5% per PL. Non-bounce, non-projectile damage/heals used to get up to 10%, but looks like that was nerfed at some point. C. if the spell has duration effects, it gets a longer duration of +5% per PL. D. if the spell has penetration, it gets an additional +.25 penetration per PL (rounds up to the nearest tenth). E1. if the spell has an accuracy roll, it gets +1 accuracy per PL. E2. if the spell primarily only has that accuracy roll (no damage/healing, no duration effect), it instead gets a +2 accuracy per PL. I'm not actually sure how many of these types of spells exist, but I noticed this while playing with Repulsing Seal (which only does a prone). Slicken is another example of a prone-only thing (though it also has a hazard duration, a hazard duration must not prevent a spell from getting +2 accuracy per PL). Empowering a spell gets you +5 PL to that spell when you cast it. Because some spells have multiple components to it that may touch on A, B, C, D, E some spells disproportionately benefit from power level scaling than others. Anecdotally, empowering a Minoletta's Concussive Missiles can be extremely powerful, because it is almost getting a boost in everything: damage, projectiles, accuracy, penetration. On the other hand, empowering a different PL4 spell like Form of the Delemgan will certainly give me a longer-lasting buff, but is not going to single-handedly swing a fight like empowering concussive missiles. Martial abilities: Non-weapon based seem to roughly follow the spell rules, but weapon-based (primary attack or full attack) abilities follow a special set of scaling, being only affected by B and secretly get an adjustment to their damage in A, but applied as a direct adjustment to the base damage roll, making it effectively a secret multiplicative damage boost. Because it is secretly applied, it's kind of hard to suss out what the bonus is, but my best guess from lots of force-attacking Eder is +5% to your roll per PL. Interestingly, doing an Empower-ed weapon ability manually adds a special damage, accuracy, and penetration bonus: +25% damage (additively combined with any inherent PL scaling), +10 accuracy and +2.5 penetration. I call this a special bonus because in the combat log, this accuracy/penetration bonus isn't attributed to power level scaling at all, it's attributed to the ability itself. And like normal power-level scaling, the Empowered damage bonus isn't actually listed on the tooltips at all, it is secretly added into the "roll" used for damage numbers. But it's there and works on weapon-based martial abilities that don't look like they have much power scaling whatsoever (i.e. Knock Down or Force of Anguish). Note that the way the base damage works means that the damage bonus is effectively a multiplicative bonus, making it more impactful than any other damage bonus in the game. Scrolls: function exactly like spells with one critical difference: instead of using your power level, it substitutes half your Arcana skill for it. Regardless of the spell on the scroll, the spell is treated as PL0. If you have a bonus to your power level (from items, potions, or whatnot), those also boost scroll power 1:1. Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on scrolls. (Note: I suspect it uses half your Arcana skill because scroll strength is already tied to arcana based on the minimum required to use one, so Obsidian didn't want you to get further insane scaling from a scroll of maelstrom, for example.) Potions/drugs: are influenced by your Alchemy skill. Like scrolls, if you have any bonus to your power level (from items, potions, or whatnot), those also boost potion/drug power level. Nalpazca monks effectively have +10 PL for drugs, which generally means +50% duration with drugs. Pre-1.2, all potions/drugs got their effect boosted by your alchemy skill, but this scaling has been removed with 1.2. (So no more broken uses of Potion of Impediment.) Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on potions. Explosives: are influenced by your Explosives skill. Bombs used to have a hidden native power level, but as of 1.2 they all have PL0 and have been rebalanced so that they scale appropriately from there. Like with other consumables, if you have any bonus to your power level (from items, potions, etc.) they also boost your explosives skill 1:1. Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on explosives. Reverse pickpocketing: from stealth, you can reverse pickpocket an explosive (can't be in your quick item slot). It gets a special version of "empower" when it detonates, which grants it +100 accuracy (all but guaranteeing a crit), and +100% to the base damage (multiplicative with other damage bonuses).' Traps: are weird~! They do their own thing when it comes to PL scaling. First, each point of Mechanics gives a +3 accuracy bonus to traps when they trigger. However, for each of your character levels, it gets a bonus PL, except this PL scaling does not affect damage, they only affect penetration, accuracy, and duration (this may be related to an issue where spells that create "hazard" effects do not do correct damage that scales with stats/abilities). Interestingly, trap duration is not affected by intellect, but trap accuracy is affected by perception. So a level 12 character with 10 mechanics would get a +30 accuracy bonus from mechanics, then another +12 accuracy from PL scaling (listed as an "ability level" bonus in the combat log). Then, if it's a trap with a duration, it gets +60% to duration, and if it's a trap with a penetration value, it gets +3.25 (rounds to 3.3 in display). Anyhoo, this effectively means that for people who keep using traps late game, they will primarily be useful for their debuffs (sorry, caltrops trap). Monastic Unarmed Training: is also weird! I did my research in a separate thread dedicated to fists. Additions welcome! I'll edit this post and add in corrections or extra details.

Wait. Does not the first attack cease stealth/invisibility? That's not what diminishing returns are though. The "true metric" is DPS, or actions/second more generally. When you go from 100/2 to 100/3 in your example the same number of modifiers is giving you the same increase in DPS or actions/second, from 1x => 2x and then 2x => 3x. That's precisely linear returns. Avoiding zero or negative recovery is simply avoiding increasing returns. You can avoid zero or negative recovery and have linear returns. It's the same reason why deflection in pillars has INCREASING returns. Even though each point gave you one point of deflection on your tooltip, the "true metric" was your effective health, which would eventually become infinite with a sufficiently high deflection. Paying attention to what your "true metric" is very important. Could you please advise if the figures in my char sheet are lower because the calculations are made according to that formula with other buffs taken into account. Only Dual Wield bonus is the same as it should be (30). I used to think it is a bug. Boy that's confusing. IIRC, Swift Strikes is a increase of +20% action speed, right? But in that recovery speed tooltip it's listed as a -17% bonus. I mean, what the heck. But naively just using the listed bonuses, 3.0s is correct. 5.0s/(1 + .06 /*dex*/ + .458 /*dual wield*/ + .17 /*swift strikes, apparently*/) = 2.96s rounds to 3.0s.

Are you sure about the "not the native level" thing? I was looking at Xoti the other day and her PL3 bonus spell is natively a PL1 druid spell, and is definitely getting PL bonuses as if it was a PL1 spell, not the subclass's PL3.

My understanding from the backer beta was that graze came back across the board. Only trouble is, repulsing seal doesn't do its sole effect (prone) on a graze, only on hit. This seems to make it very underpowered compared to Pillar of Faith on the same power level. To reproduce: take any game and use repulsing seal on a moderate to high fortitude enemy. On a graze, note that no prone happens.

I looked at a few in-game examples last night and I can at least confirm that the maluses I saw were using correctly computed coefficients so e.g. no overweighting, just like a straight additive modifier. But that was only a few more than from above. (looked at other armor examples and a couple of weapon/shield modals that increase recovery time) Adding to the confusion is that the tooltip doesn't show every effect. For example I had a character with a Swift inspiration, and while their tooltip recovery was correct, the listed modifiers showed only the unmodified dexterity bonus.

Never mind about the power level thing. I am figuring out that abilities only gain power level bonuses if you have a power level above their native power level.

You know what, I just noticed this most recent time Tekehu got stuck that he had switched to his starter chant on his own. I'm going to try nuking it myself.

Sorry, but this is orthogonal to my issue. Even with Tekehu having no specific AI set, he will chant on his own, automatically. Just occasionally he stops regardless doing anything, even though he is still doing auto-attacks. Like I said, randomly selecting chants outside of combat will "unstick" whatever is causing him to stop singing and he'll start again in fights after. EDIT: i also don't know what having AI behavior set would do, because both chanter things only affect what invocations are used. But just to confirm, I did set some AI when this problem cropped up again just now, and it doesn't fix anything. Tekehu doesn't sing any chants.

See attached screenshot. The damage roll is nowhere even in the right range as the tooltip damage numbers. In addition, there appears to be no power level scaling for the damage in the tooltip, when other spells at this level get power level scaling. Dropbox link with autosave and output_log. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4vmjpryc5op31vn/AADg2me3S29bRD_E6FY80wvsa?dl=0 Go into an area and set the warding seal as a trap outside of combat and let an enemy run into it.

I'm waiting for confirmation/tests on action speed coefficients before making this case stronger because things might still be weird for maluses, but for bonuses that's not diminishing returns. When your reload speed is already lowish, smaller absolute decreases are needed to achieve the same result as when your reload speed was longer; a 1s reduction at a reload speed of 5s is much, much, much weaker than a 1s reduction at a reload speed of 2s. I put together a dumb spreadsheet to show this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12UmZTdi5yZuU-OC8Ek8cdqAvnUylFP-9Po7dz_Cq-Sk/edit?usp=sharing here's a screenshot of the important chart: This hypothetical scenario assumes you attack for an average of 15 damage every 5 seconds (combined attack+recovery time), and that chart shows you how much damage you do over one minute. You can make the equations as complicated and as representative of actual in-game numbers as you want, but this hypothetical abstraction is good enough for our purposes. You'll notice that we have a straight, solid diagonal line going from 0% bonus to 200% action speed bonus. That is literally the definition of linear returns. (For the calculus-inclined, more formally linear returns means that for a function f(x), the second derivative f''(x) = 0).

i think this happens because of level geometry. normally, you can see an enemy at like X+Y meters away, and the enemy can see you at X. Normally "pause on enemy spotted" means you'll be in that comfortable zone of [X, X+Y] meters away, so the game will pause and you can stealth. However, if you run around a corner and the map suddenly reveals an enemy really close by, then you'll already be in detection range and combat will be initiated (and I think the game deliberately doesn't autopause in this situation so that it doesn't clash with the "pause on combat start" option, unlike pillars of eternity 1). Sometimes though, I can still stealth just as combat begins, and once I'm stealthed I might still be far enough away from the enemy's stealth detection circle that combat will start, but then almost immediately end.

I don't actually see this anywhere in-game or on deadfire wiki or anything. Is it still the same as pillars, e.g. 35% of damage done gained as focus?

Is there a comprehensive list of coefficients anywhere? I think part of the confusion is that I think damage equation is legit bugged. Because from that blunted critical screenshot upthread, the damage numbers are only possible if Obsidian is naively using 1-1/.75 as the coefficient, and NOT the "correct" one of 1-1/.8 for blunted critical (assuming the damage equation is still similar to the action speed equation). Effectively this means all stated damage penalties are worth more than they actually are, regardless of whether it is combined with positives or not. Whereas at least with action speed, when I was diagnosing a bug in the tech support thread, the "correct" malus coefficients appeared to be being used, e.g. armor, sharpshooter, overdraw. Double inversion itself doesn't overweight negatives. It only goes so if the negative values themselves are initially stored/calculated in-game incorrectly. EDIT: here's some rhetorical thought experiment for some obvious, well-known cases. a) Why are armor coefficients the way they are? Why is heavy armor .645 instead of (1-.55)? b) Back when overdraw was a +100% recovery speed penalty, I think it was confirmed that the coefficient being used was .5, not (1-1 =) 0, which would be a divide by zero error anyway. Why was it .5? Once you've answered a and b, what should the coefficient for a -50% penalty be? Hopefully from A and B we can logically see that it shouldn't be .5 (that's the same as a -100% penalty), and that it actually should be 1/1.5 = .6667. Which means, from MaxQuest's example on the first page: Is it actually confirmed from in-game files that the -25% arbalest modal is implemented as a .75 (=1-.25) coefficient and not a .8 (=1/1.25)? Because if this is real and not just hypothetical then Obsidian has buggy coefficients for action speed as well, because clearly they have the correct coefficients elsewhere (despite what the in-game tool-tip says) for things like armor (which says e.g. +20% recovery but is internally a .8333x coefficient, not .8x) and dual wield bonuses (which says -30% recovery time but is internally a 1.428x coefficient not 1.3x), and at least by my own calculations, something like sharpshooter penalty (a -10% recovery penalty that is implemented as a .91x coefficient not .9x). I feel like filing bugs in the technical support forums for specific coefficients would be far more productive than complaining about a percieved balance decision about maluses via double-inversion (which mathematically isn't an issue). I'd check numbers in-game, but I'm at work.

That's not what diminishing returns are though. The "true metric" is DPS, or actions/second more generally. When you go from 100/2 to 100/3 in your example the same number of modifiers is giving you the same increase in DPS or actions/second, from 1x => 2x and then 2x => 3x. That's precisely linear returns. Avoiding zero or negative recovery is simply avoiding increasing returns. You can avoid zero or negative recovery and have linear returns. It's the same reason why deflection in pillars has INCREASING returns. Even though each point gave you one point of deflection on your tooltip, the "true metric" was your effective health, which would eventually become infinite with a sufficiently high deflection. Paying attention to what your "true metric" is very important.

Also I might be wrong about this, but I think it is incorrect to call action speed in Deadfire "diminishing returns". The ultimate metric you are measuring is actions/second, not your recovery rate or attack speed, and so while the visible effect on your tool-tip recovery numbers looks like it becomes less and less impactful, the number you are shrinking is effectively the denominator for the true metric, which means small increases on small numbers can be just as impactful as large increases on large numbers. So while Pillars had increasing returns (up until you had zero recovery), I'm pretty sure Deadfire legitimately has linear returns.

I don't follow some of the points. You say "double inversion" makes attack speed maluses worse than equivalent positive bonuses, but if coefficients are computed correctly, the net effect of the first inversion is to simply turn the coefficient of penalties into the "tool-tip" negative additive bonus, and then the second inversion returns it back to a coefficient. By "computed correctly" I mean if you have something that has a tool-tip/stated value of reduction your action speed by 25%, the coefficient would be .8, not .75 (if you naively did coeff = 1 - .25). The values for armor recovery coefficient suggest that obsidian is storing the "correct coefficient" (e.g. .645 = 1/1.55 instead of .45 = 1 - .55 for heavy armors), at least for action speed. Unless I'm not following the equation, all the first inversion does is turn the .645 into a -.55 additive modifier, which means it has the same exact weight as any positive bonus to your action speed. The second inversion (if the penalties over-power your bonuses) simply turns it into a coefficient again in a manner that is exactly what it should be. Maybe you have a better insight into what coefficients are being used, but in abstract I don't think the "double inversion" thing is correct. EDIT: i realize everyone powergaming has been talking about double inversion throughout the backer beta so it might feel like i'm just coming out of nowhere with this, but I didn't really start paying attention to the math until release. I'm actually legit a little confused about this, so any correction would be helpful.

Update: I was able to get him to start singing chants again by fiddling with chants outside of combat. Somehow this ended up reseting something where he started singing again.

Using Tekehu. I don't know when exactly this started, but I noticed recently that I haven't been able to use more than one invocation at the start of the fight. Sure enough, in combat I just observe Tekehu and he is not chanting any phrases. I have tried changing chants, but he just doesn't seem to be wanting to do chants anymore. Help! Attached is a dropbox link to a saved game and output log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w3s1c184t3pe65n/AABS1M3jRPMqGcjD7VmsrtOBa?dl=0 Here is a screenshot of Tekehu with no chants active (and sitting at 0 phrases after the initial invocation).