JerekKruger

Ideally I'd like it if when I click Empower all spell tooltips are modified to include the bonus power levels e.g. I click Empower, right-click Minoletta's Minor Missiles and the number of projectiles reflects the bonus power levels from Empower. Ideally there should be an Encylopedia entry breaking this down in detail.

Indeed. When I mouse over the Empower ability I want it to tell me exactly how many bonus power levels it provides, and then when I have Empower selected I want the tooltips of all spells and abilities to be modified to take this into account (at the moment they display their stats without the modification). I also want every aspect of spells affected by power levels to have a hyperlink breaking down the calculation (currently some do, some don't) and I want there to be an Encylopedia entry that breaks down, in detail, exactly what power levels do to different types of spells.

To me saying I "cast" Knockdown sounds clunky. It's a minor thing I agree, but it might be part of why Obsidian went with power levels (it also might not ) I really think you're under estimating the ability of players to (a) intuit what a power level is or (b) learn what it is from reading a very simple tooltip. You're making the whole system sound a lot more complicated than it actually is. The actual nitty gritty comes with what exactly increasing power levels does to abilities, but that's no different to character level or caster level. I'm pretty sure it was a joke yes. I quoted it because I don't actually think you need anything more than the name "power level" to understand what power levels are. I mean, how else are you going to interpret "whilst under the effect of a Might, Constitution or Dexterity Inspiration all abilities get +2 power levels"? Sure, you don't know exactly what that means (hence the thread title) but I don't think many people are going to fail to realise it means the ability becomes more powerful.

No no, ice magic because dead bodies are cold obviously.

The race isn't all that important, especially if you're playing with a party, so if you like Nature Godlikes go for it. That said, Nature Godlike is perhaps the worst race in the game so if you're looking at them from a power gaming point of view I'd look somewhere else. In case you're wondering, the reason they're bad is because you shouldn't be spending much of your time at low health and as a Godlike you lose the ability to wear a helmet e.g. one that gives you +3 or even +4 Might all the time.

Fighers, Rogues, Monks, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians aren't casters, but have abilities that scale with power level. When it comes down to it power level is basically the same thing as caster level except with a name that doesn't imply it only applies to casters. You'd have to explain the same thing if you used to term "caster level" too. Just because the name is familiar doesn't mean people will magically know that increasing it would increase Accuracy, number of projectiles, damage etc. I honestly don't see what the complexity is. As Sedrefilos said: The details of what extra levels of power mean needs to be learnt, but the same would be true of extra caster levels too.

Definitely, but I assume (or hope at least) that much of the current UI is very much a work in progress and things like this will be improved for release.

Personally I like the idea of power levels, though I agree the tooltips really need to do a better job of explaining how they interact with various spells and abilities (which I am sure they will on release). As for using character levels instead, one of the things that power levels do is allow a more elegant way to boost the power of spells and abilities. For example, a Nature Godlike gets +2 power level if they are under the effect of a Might, Constitution or Dexterity Inspiration which, if it were couched in terms of character levels would have to be "spells and abilities are cast as though by a character of 1 level higher" or something similarly inelegant. Power levels separate out the ability scaling part of levelling up from things like getting extra hit points, which I like.

I'd be surprised if vendor's inventory has an affect on loading times. I almost always sell everything I find at the Black Hound (to avoid inventory bloat of good vendors and because I believe, perhaps wrongly, that after rescuing the cook I get better prices there) and yet never notice longer loading times in Gilded Vale or the Black Hound. Also calling up and modifying a list of a vendor's inventory should not be a computationally demanding task (we're talking reading/writing a few hundred numbers). I was very much under the impression that the loading times problem was related to repeated use of the quick load/save function. This would certainly match my own experiences since, whilst longer than one would expect, my load times never get slower as I play and I never use quick load/save (my PC is not particularly amazing and I don't have an SSD).

Yes and no. A given bow, if drawn fully, will always contain the same amount of energy regardless of the strength of the user. Of course heavier draw weight bows wouldn't be drawable by people with insufficient strength, but as your strength increases you won't get more energy into the bow. That said Completely agreed.

I always turned AI off. As far as I can tell this resulted in them nothing without express orders e.g. they stand there getting attacked until I ordered them to attack back,

Yeah. Even I, who makes Mallory Archer look like a hands off manager, might use it for things like this.

As a massive control freak I will probably hardly use the AI, but it does look very cool for those who don't micromanage to the extent that I do.

What's the rest of your party? Classes, attributes, gear etc.?

Ranger abilities mostly returning to being usable in melee will make people happy.

Can't see any reason why not. As far as I'm aware Boeroer chose Pale Elf because it fitted aesthetically, not because the build relied on the Pale Elf's racial bonuses. You'll lose a tiny bit of tankiness going Boreal Dwarf and gain a bit of damage dealing capability against two enemy types, but this won't make much of a difference overall.

Yeah Wizards feel very lacklustre in Deadfire. Their self buffs are, as Boeroer says, pretty good as they are (mostly) near instant cast (0.4 seconds) and zero recovery, but all their other spells suffer massively from very slow casting and recovery times (typical is 6 seconds cast, 3 seconds recovery). At the moment, with a well built melee party this often results in easier fights being over or nearly over before the Wizard has cast a single spell, making the change in spell casting from per rest to per encounter less handy than it first appeared. Moreover the loss of graze has resulted in offensive spells missing altogether much more often meaning that even after a lengthy cast your spell might very well do nothing. Their subclasses also seem weak to me. You lose access to two of the five spell schools, which can sometimes mean losing access to more than 40% of spells of a given level, and the recovery of spells from the two other non-specialised schools is increased, all in exchange for +1 power level and an ability which varies between useless and decent (but not amazing). Bear in mind that a Nature Godlike Wizard can get +2 power levels by casting a very fast self buff at the start of combat. Also strange is the way spells scale, making multiclassing as a Wizard pretty good if you focus entirely on self buffs (you lose a bit of buff duration but nothing else) and terrible if you want to use any offensive spells. All in all I think Wizards need a lot of work by Obsidian. They were too powerful in Pillars but they are horribly weak in Deadfire.

They're changing the penetration system to be less punishing in the next beta patch and will no doubt keep tweaking it until release (and perhaps beyond). Fingers crossed they'll find a good balance.

I imagine Faith and Conviction will be changed with the full release to either scale with dispositions* (for the Watcher) or scale with power level for other characters. This should reduce its power for multiclass characters a little which seems fair. *Assuming dispositions are still in?

Casters in general are a bit weak at the moment I feel, and they suffer more than melee classes from the power level drop that comes with multiclassing.

I doubt we'd be given the option to mute selected characters. Baldur's Gate 2 would have lost a lot if Irenicus's voice actor had been muted, but it would also have been a lot worse (for me at least) if every single line of dialogue had been voice acted poorly. I'd much rather have only the key characters in the game voice acted, but have them done really well, than have every single merchant and random person on the street have all their lines voice acted badly just because it has become the industry standard.

The Beyond seems like a great location for a battle. Good catch.

Apparently they'd be too powerful otherwise.

@Sedrefilos - If it cost nothing to add full (mutable) voice acting to the game I'd agree, but it does cost money. You are of course correct that we don't know have the details for Deadfire's budget, it the cost of full voice acting; but we do know that more voice acting will cost more money and that Deadfire's budget is finite. Given this, and the fact I find partial voice acting perfectly enjoyable when done well (and full voice acting actually detracts from my enjoyment when it's done badly), if rather Obsidian sacrifice voice acting rather than other sources of the game if they need to do either. Of course if Obsidian do decide they have the money for full voice acting then that's great. I ain't against it in principle or anything.

I wouldn't be surprised if that is removed given Carnage no longer works that way (same for the Rod modal too I suspect).