Just Found Out About "Suppression" In Deadfire...

[patronkus]

So POE 1 had Suppression, a mechanic which limited bonuses into stats by just taking the highest of any bonuses. Deadfire took this out in exchange for the simplified Inspiration system but there are still non inspiration bonuses floating about. Today, I was messing around with my Barbarian and testing out Guardian Plate for him. Plagued Strength looked really nice, it gives +2 MIG, CON and DEX so I thought to combo it with Taru Turu Chew (+3 MIG, CON and DEX) and Frenzy (Strong + Fit) to get +10 MIG and CON. What I did not know is that when I checked my stats, Taru Turu Chew did not list as applied and the value added to my Barbarians MIG and CON was +7 not +10. After some more testing, it seems the bonus from Taru Turu Chew is Suppressed by the Inspirations as it is better. I had no idea about this and it applies to like everything. 

This is probably already well known by this point from Deadfire experts but I had no idea. Now I will be using Mouth Char instead for my Barbarian but it got me wondering what other people are going to use as their Drug bonus. For instance I had Fassina using Taru Turu Chew too but Citzal's Martial Might already covers all those bonuses (MIG, CON, DEX) but now that is useless as it is just superceded by the inspirations. What other Suppression effects are there in the game I should be aware of?

[dgray62]

Generally speaking what you report is correct; the active bonus to STR and CON of Taru Turu Chew is suppressed by the better active bonus of frenzy. The same is true of food bonuses as well. However, in my game at least, if you save and reload after resting with food and taking the drug, the bonuses from food and the drug WILL stack with the inspiration bonuses. I believe that this is not the case for all versions of the game, but it works in my version, and is definitely worth testing. You can also get ALL of the drug bonuses BTW if you take them in the right order and save and reload after taking each one. This is only worth doing, however, if you plan on extending the effects using Strand of Favor.

[Constentin Lévine]

Active effects (inspirations, monk Dualities, food, drugs, potions, etc) doesnt stack. It is a general rule working for everythink, like PL (Acute/Brilliant and the Potion of elevation dont give +3pl but +2). 

They stack with passive effects, from items, weapons, etc. All passives stack excepted with identical active or passive ( ex : the +50deflection from Escape (cape of evasion) stack with everythink excepted Escape from Rogue or priest).

Like said by @dgray62there is some tricks about active effects, and you can find the order (drugs) in the topic about Ultimate part2 I think.

Tomorrow I will make a post about it (not intended by the way!)

[thelee]

IME getting active abilities to become passive is not consistent. In that Ultimate thread there are a few of us (myself included) that tried a lot of different ways to consistently reproduce stacking, and we could not (I tried zoning between areas, saving/reloading/relaunching). I ended up not relying on it for my Ultimate planning, though in the end I did get stacked effects IIRC. One might be able to say that the longer your game goes on and the more save/reload/relaunches you do, the more likely it is that your persistent active effects (food, drug, etc) will stack. (I had a beastmaster that casually benefited on being able to stack Devotions of the Faithful and the accuracy bonuses from Hunter's Claw, despite my inability to consistently reproduce stacking effects during my Ultimate planning.) It might also be path-dependent to trigger these sorts of stacking (e.g. maybe some effects are less likely or can be triggered to be more likely based on other effects, who knows).

Edited October 6, 2022 by thelee