There's a lot of unique abilities, modals, foods, and weapons, armours in deadfire. And multiclass opens up new synergies. This means lots of different builds. Whereas the main variety in poe 1 comes from class abilities. Weapons and items have more or less the same few enchantments. 

Edited January 13, 20251 yr by Darab Masood

For sure Deadfire has deeper mechanics than PoE, even if some features of PoE got streamlined (health/endurance for example, less party members).

More subclasses and more levels means a lot more abilities per class, multiclassing and the new enchantment system with individual enchantments as well as weapon modals/proficiencies lead to a lot of variety and complexity. And then PEN vs. AR (which is more complex than dmg vs. DR), new (more complex) interrupts...

 

i would also add that various streamlines mechanics have actually allowed for bigger mechanical depth.

replacing most of the random buffs/debuffs in poe1 with the inspiration and affliction system is at, first glance, a huge streamlining. but it opens up the door for a lot more interesting combat interactions (since afflictions and inspirations counter each other), it also makes a lot of stuff easier to reason about.

also a lot of mechanics (esp the ones that boeroer mentions - PEN/AR and interrupts) benefit from i think what sawyer called "de-murking." Making them more obvious and impactful. Interrupts were barely worth paying attention to in poe1, but are really critical for mastering deadfire. Same thing with PEN vs AR compared to DR.