JerekKruger

Nope, Dexterity works differently to other action speed modifiers. Here's a rough explanation: Every action consists of three (sometimes four) parts: delay, action and recovery (and sometimes reload). The delay is about five frames (1/6th of a second) long and can't be sped up by anything. The action can only be sped up by your Dexterity modifier, for example if an attack animation takes 1s with Dexterity 10 then with Dexterity 15 (+15% Action Speed) it will take 1/1.15 = 0.87s Recovery is affected both by the various Action Speed bonuses/penalties and by Dexterity. The way you calculate it is complicated (see this thread) but basically you start with your base recovery, apply all Action Speed bonuses/penalties, then apply the Dexterity bonus afterwards. The important thing to notice is that if your recovery reaches zero (doable with quite a few classes) then Dexterity only speeds up the Action Speed, whereas if your recovery is nonzero then Dexterity reduces it as well. The ease with which Wizards can reach zero recovery is the reason that, typically, Wizard builds tend to have fairly low Dexterity, whereas Priests (who don't have the pleasure of DAoM and have fewer fast casting spells) are often built with maxed Dexterity.

≠ isn't a transitive relation so it's not clear from that whether, for example, shapeshift ≠ spiritshift

I don't know whether it has been said specifically, but I would be surprised if you couldn't. The ship is basically your stronghold and all companions in PoE lived at Caed Nua once you'd acquired it.

More Dexterity always increases action speed so there is no true max action speed. That said, if you reach zero recovery (fairly easy to do as a Wizard with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion) then the extra speed from increased Dexterity becomes fairly minor. Personally I'd keep Dexterity at 10 for any Wizard: many of your spells as Fast casting and, once you get it, DAoM should always be the first thing you cast in combat (and you should almost always pick if for your level four spell mastery).

This. And barbutes!

I predict we'll still be seeing threads about this at least two years after Deadfire is released.

Huh, interesting. I had always assumed each spell with the same casting time descriptor had the same casting time, but I guess there's some variation within each category. That definitely makes Master of Puppets useful in some cases.

Whispers of Treason is also fast cast I believe. Both were changed in one of the later patches (they used to be average or slow cast) to make them more appealing. Possibly Puppet Master had a higher accuracy bonus? Otherwise it honestly seems to be a worse ability all round.

Whilst not perfect, you can use to console to hide helmets.

In addition to this, we've never had a Pale Elf or Mountain Dwarf companion, whereas all other race variants (other than all the Godlikes) have been represented.

I like Bonteru and Radora's a lot, Ydwin's is very well drawn but I don't really like it, not sure how I feel about Rekke's.

If I went with that definition then I don't think any games could truly be called RPGs, as none really allow proper role-playing comparable to tabletop role-playing. I suppose some MUDs and, to a lesser extent, RP-servers for MMOs might count. I think if I had to define what makes a game an RPG I'd say it's a combination of a heavy focus on story and some sort of progression system.

Agreed. If you have preknowledge of the endings then I'd say the "happiest" is supporting the Dozens but making them work with the Crucible Knights afterwards, followed by supporting the Crucible Knights but having them abandon their Forge Knight experiments. However the Dozens do come across as an unruly mob and, without out of character knowledge, handing over power to them does not seem sensible.

Not a big fan of Ydwin's portrait still, but I agree that she's not really anime.

Are female dwarfs in Eora described as having beards in the lore?

The word "niche" has its own niche, and that niche is a different niche to the one containing this forum.

I think you're being a little generous, I only think it's be this big. More seriously, I suspect it will be about as successful as Pillars was, or a little more. Most people who bought Pillars will buy Deadfire, if not at release then somewhere down the line on sale, plus a few more. We'll probably see a small peak in sales of Pillars too, with people new to the franchise picking it up as well as Deadfire. I doubt it will sell significantly more copies than Pillars, but it doesn't really need to as Pillars was more successful than Obsidian had anticipated.

I guess it could simply be really bad luck. A X% chance to crit doesn't guarantee that X% of your attacks will be crits (unless X = 100). That said, that seems pretty unlikely.

A little heavy handed, but it works

This will depend on which character I import from Pillars, which I haven't quite done, but once I do I'll make sure to complete the survey.

Here's an idea for Priests: have them automatically learn a small core of diety specific spells each power level, and also allow them to choose a few on top of that. This makes up for not having Grimoires, and makes sense from an RP perspective too (I think).

Perhaps it could be used to signify a crash from drugs.

Well the Shieldbearer's are almost without downside: just make sure you have some potions and/or another source of healing in your party.

Called it!

Even in the update video they said that when you recruit a companion your given the choice of multiclassing them.