The Perfect Party - 26/03/20 10:36 AM
So, I've been wondering if there's a "default perfect party" for this game. I started thinking about this 5 years ago, playing Divinity Original Sin, but I haven't found a conclusion yet. I'm talking about party composition, like, how many rangers should I have, if any, how many spell casters, if any. How many tanks/fighters/knights, and so on.
I finished Divinity Original Sin once. I haven't finished Divinity Original Sin II yet.
I read about 1 Fighter, 1 Ranger(or Rogue), 1 Enchanter and 1 Wizard on gamepressure.com. I watched Fextralife's video "Optimal Party Composition". And I heard some people suggesting an all physical damage party, for maximum damage output. One of these could be the perfect party, but I'm not really convinced of that for now.
What do I mean by "default perfect party? Well, it's not totally clear even for me, but I guess the key word is "Balance". A party that "fills all the boxes". A party that has a good (as high as possible?) amount of all Attributes, all Combat Abilities, all Civil Abilities, all Talents, all Skills (or as many as possible), etc. I would also consider Equipment, given that a party with 4 Rangers would probably struggle to find optimal equipment for all 4 party members.
A party that is as powerful and dynamic as it gets, would be my so called "perfect party".
Why do I use the word default? Because the party would be built around the core mechanics of the game. For example, there's something that I like to call the "3 Pillars" of the two Divinity games. The 3 Pillars are Strength, Finesse and Intelligence. Many things on the game seem to be built around these 3 stats. It's funny that I probably wouldn't be typing this text wall if this game was meant to be played by 3 characters instead of 4. Then each character would invest in it's own Attribute and many things would be more simple. 1 Strength based character, 1 Finesse based character, and 1 Intelligence based character. The first fight on the Arena at Fort Joy seems to reproduce this idea. But here's my eternal dilemma, what is the fourth character supposed to be then?
I was thinking, maybe the fourth character is the "player character", the one that is supposed to represent the player. Therefore the one which we could "mess around", giving him any preferred mix of stats and equipment without worrying about breaking the game balance. Each one of the other 3 companions focusing on it's own "Pillar", and making a solid base for the main player character. Thus the player character would be free to make choices independent of game mechanics, just role playing and having fun.
For this whole train of thought I'm only taking in consideration a single player game. I'm not thinking about multiplayer.
A little thing that bothers me:
The big number of Skills influenced by Intelligence makes me think that I should have at least 2 Intelligence based characters. But at the same time I don't like this idea. I would rather have 1 Intelligence based character so he could have access to all the Skills that come from mixing Skill schools, like Blood Rain. 2 Intelligence based characters wouldn't have access to all the mixed Skills.
On the other side of the coin, having 1 Intelligence based character makes me limited because of Memory. He can learn this huge amount of Skills, but he can't use even half of them in combat because of the Memory limitation. 🤷â€â™‚ï¸
Just to leave it clear: I love both Divinity games and it's mechanics. I'm not making any criticism here, not asking for any change. Don't intend to insult the developers or anything like that.
I wish I could ask it directly to a dev: What is the default ideal party composition?
But anyone should feel free to post any comments about the topic, even if you don't have any answers to my questions. ✌
I finished Divinity Original Sin once. I haven't finished Divinity Original Sin II yet.
I read about 1 Fighter, 1 Ranger(or Rogue), 1 Enchanter and 1 Wizard on gamepressure.com. I watched Fextralife's video "Optimal Party Composition". And I heard some people suggesting an all physical damage party, for maximum damage output. One of these could be the perfect party, but I'm not really convinced of that for now.
What do I mean by "default perfect party? Well, it's not totally clear even for me, but I guess the key word is "Balance". A party that "fills all the boxes". A party that has a good (as high as possible?) amount of all Attributes, all Combat Abilities, all Civil Abilities, all Talents, all Skills (or as many as possible), etc. I would also consider Equipment, given that a party with 4 Rangers would probably struggle to find optimal equipment for all 4 party members.
A party that is as powerful and dynamic as it gets, would be my so called "perfect party".
Why do I use the word default? Because the party would be built around the core mechanics of the game. For example, there's something that I like to call the "3 Pillars" of the two Divinity games. The 3 Pillars are Strength, Finesse and Intelligence. Many things on the game seem to be built around these 3 stats. It's funny that I probably wouldn't be typing this text wall if this game was meant to be played by 3 characters instead of 4. Then each character would invest in it's own Attribute and many things would be more simple. 1 Strength based character, 1 Finesse based character, and 1 Intelligence based character. The first fight on the Arena at Fort Joy seems to reproduce this idea. But here's my eternal dilemma, what is the fourth character supposed to be then?
I was thinking, maybe the fourth character is the "player character", the one that is supposed to represent the player. Therefore the one which we could "mess around", giving him any preferred mix of stats and equipment without worrying about breaking the game balance. Each one of the other 3 companions focusing on it's own "Pillar", and making a solid base for the main player character. Thus the player character would be free to make choices independent of game mechanics, just role playing and having fun.
For this whole train of thought I'm only taking in consideration a single player game. I'm not thinking about multiplayer.
A little thing that bothers me:
The big number of Skills influenced by Intelligence makes me think that I should have at least 2 Intelligence based characters. But at the same time I don't like this idea. I would rather have 1 Intelligence based character so he could have access to all the Skills that come from mixing Skill schools, like Blood Rain. 2 Intelligence based characters wouldn't have access to all the mixed Skills.
On the other side of the coin, having 1 Intelligence based character makes me limited because of Memory. He can learn this huge amount of Skills, but he can't use even half of them in combat because of the Memory limitation. 🤷â€â™‚ï¸
Just to leave it clear: I love both Divinity games and it's mechanics. I'm not making any criticism here, not asking for any change. Don't intend to insult the developers or anything like that.
I wish I could ask it directly to a dev: What is the default ideal party composition?
But anyone should feel free to post any comments about the topic, even if you don't have any answers to my questions. ✌