Heart-Chime Amulet/Strand of Favor question

[masterty66]

I had a few quick questions on a couple of items.

The Heart-Chime Amulet has 20% chance to give 20% of the damage in health for Fire key worded attacks for Fire Godlike. I'm currently playing a Fire Godlike Shifter/Paladin. Does that mean I could get 20% of the damage in health back off of my flames of devotion attacks? That seems like it would be decently large. Perhaps enough to be worth using.

Second question was around Strand of Favor. This necklace gives -10% hostile effect duration. Does this stack with Outworn Buckler? That would mean theoretically -20% hostile effect duration if combined, which seems massive, especially with the trick @dgray1981pointed out to me about rapidly swapping between Buckler/Lethandria's devotion to quickly stack healing and negative duration.

Debating what necklace to use and these are two I'm currently considering.

Edited September 15, 2022 by masterty66

[dgray62]

The  hostile effect durations from multiple items/food/abilities do stack, but not additively. Due to negative inversions (which I don't understand) the stacking effect is smaller than you might expect. So -10% plus -10% doesn't yield -20%, but something more modest, like -12% or something like that. But keep in mind if you do rapid weapon switching with outworn buckler and the game paused you can remove any hostile effects completely, at the cost of recovery due to weapon switching.

[Constentin Lévine]

45 minutes ago, masterty66 said:

The Heart-Chime Amulet has 20% chance to give 20% of the damage in health for Fire key worded attacks for Fire Godlike

That concern the damage taken, so a fire version of Cauldron Shard.

I think you can get a descent returned healing from fire damage you dealt with Magran's Favor : 15% of fire damage dealt by the weapon is returned to health, and you can add some fire lash to the attack. 15% from the weapon + 20% from Flame of Devotion, + 15% with a chanter in the party (Aefyllath chant) and maybe some others lash. I never try this thing. The burn AoE attack triggered on kill and maybe the DoT-on-crit should return some health too.

45 minutes ago, masterty66 said:

This necklace gives -10% hostile effect duration. Does this stack with Outworn Buckler?

They stack but not additionally (one after the other). In first, the Resolve malus on hostile effects is applied, then the others but I dont know the order. You cant reach -100% I mean.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Constentin Lévine

[thelee]

inversions are really ugly. if you're curious, you can read about them here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions

i suggest two rules of thumbs.

first. "is this thing affected by inversions?" if you stacked a bunch of small modifiers together, could it result in a complete negation of something? (e.g. -100% hostile duration, or -100% area of effect, or -100% healing, or -100% action speed) then yes, it's affected by inversions. this is basically why inversions exist, so that you can have an additive system without worrying about accidentally creating enough negative modifiers that you have 0 or less than 0 effects unless you deliberately want to completely negate something, e.g. Enfeebled affliction.

second. "how do these things stack?" the 'easy' answer is that they are not quite as strong as multiplicative effects, but are nonetheless roughly similar in impact. so a -75% PEN penalty functions like a multiplier of .25x. Two -10% hostile duration modifiers functions like a .9x modifier and a .9x modifier multiplied together. Remember, it's not exactly like this, when it comes to combining multiple negative modifiers it's much more moderate, but it should give you a rough ballpark on how strong or weak modifiers are when combined together.

Edited September 15, 2022 by thelee