Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Opinion: Hybrid characters are no good

Hey all,

I've spent nearly 100 hours in the beta so far. I'm addicted to this game!

Just some thoughts on hybrid characters since the patch that changed skills to directly be affected by stats. Playing both before and after this patch, my conclusion is that hybrid characters are now useless when compared to non-hybrid characters. Perhaps useless is too strong of a word, but "not nearly as effective" would be accurate.

I do agree that before hybrid characters were overpowered - my Battlemage was a boss at melee and all the schools of magic. But now they are nerfed to the point where I don't see the use of them.

The skill penalties for doing a hybrid character (other than ranger/rogue who share Dexterity based skills) are massive. In the first few levels this isn't that noticeable, as getting 8 into a primary stat isn't that hard. But the next round of skills starts at stat 10. Lets take a battlemage for example. how are you going to maintain 10 int & 10 strength evenly all the time so you don't get penalties? I think you could, but by the time you do you'll have hit the next range of skills/spells then run into the same problem.

Then we have the skill penalty issue. I believe this is great for balancing - having no penalty on skill level for magic was an issue. But between the -20% effectiveness of skills or extra 2-3AP to use a skill, I don't see how hybrid characters are worthwhile vs a straight up mage, warrior, ranger, etc who not only get no penalties, but get skill boosts for high stats.

For example the wayfarer preset class is witch + rogue (I think.) In either case you start with only 7 dexterity. This gives you a 90% chance to cast your haste since you have a -10% penalty for low dexterity. My first fight I go to cast this, it "fumbles" since it has a 10% chance to fail. Maybe not such a big deal on low cd spells, but haste has a 20 turn cool down. So you either get it right, or don't use it in a fight at all. Of course you'll quickly get a point into dexterity making that particular spell fine, but the next range of spells will all have dex penalties if you focus on int, or vice versa.

Another example: The battlemage starts with both low int AND low str, so all her spells have penalties. I love that hybrid class the best (as an idea) but in practice it is no longer effective.

Just my thoughts. I know in traditional D&D you have penalties for hybrid characters. But this somehow seems too severe. I don't know what the solution is, other than giving you more stat points to spend. But that leads to other balance problems I guess.

What does everyone else think?

I'm fine with the restrictions, but I am an old AD&D head. This reminds of multi-classing. Like a Bards for instance, possibly the most overlooked build, but quite useful in many ways. The Bard is just not as good as a full class, but whilst he can shoot a magic missile or 2 and then heal you...then confuse the enemy ect, the Fighter just hits really hard. This class along with Rangers, Paladins were a nightmare to roll, soo many stat requirements.

So is it worth it? Sure if you are planning to build around your character, also realizing early on will most likely be known as the 'gimpy days'.

As far as O.S.'s approach, it seems appropriate. Some class combos could be really beefy, so this makes there reason to roll either way..one may just be tougher early.

This is all opinion, as you noted. To my mind, hybrid characters are jsut a different kind of challenge to play.

Hybrid characters will typically be underpowered compared to characters specialized either way, no question. With this approach, you'll be lagging behind on the set of skills you can use at peak efficiency, and that may mean you'll constantly feel underpowered against the current challenges in the game-as-released. (NWN via D&D made me want to say original campaign.)

If you're into role-playing, then versatile but underwhelming is just another approach. It certainly makes you think more about tactics, which this game encourages.

The fact that you have at least a party of two also means you can compensate to some extent for any given character's weaknesses.

Dunno, on my full play through of the beta, for the main chars I had one warrior and one hybrid - Shadowblade and the Shadowblade ended up being more versatile and powerful than any of my companions or warrior, just depends on how you build your hybrid I guess.

Having one hybrid as a utility char also seemed to help rather than wasting ability and talent points better spent on "main" stats for your non hybrids. At least for me.

On my playthough I rolled a Rogue/Priest combo. Though my rogue was more akin to an 'Arcane Trickster'(D&Dsubclass) ..So a rogue with magic capabilities, or hybrid if you will. This worked out fine, I found telekinesis to be invaluable, using barrels at will on mobs made for differing tactics all together. The priest was mainly there as a help early on, meatshield/healbot.

It's all about the items.

Str 10/Int 10 requires an initial investment of 15 points, plus 2 from levelling up, plus a further 3 from items. It's tough, but by no means impossible as my gf's battlemage can attest.

On top of this, sometimes you don't need to be super specialised in multiple attributes, having a chance to fail is a cost and believing hybrid chars are no good simply because you failed a 10% chance one time is no different to having a 100% chance and failing because of their saving throws.

Also, don't use the presets - they're for people wanting to rush in. Make your own character and run with that before deciding the presets determine everything.

Hopefully I've been unlucky, but I find +str+int too common, in pairs too, versus say +dex+int or +str+dex.

I don't use any of the presets, I only did my first run or two. But a lot of new and/or unfamiliar players are going to be using the presets, so that's why I brought it up since that's how the devs have tuned it.

I am one of those "peak efficiency" players so the hybrid penalties annoy me :P

Saving throws do happen, but I've yet to fail a 100%-120% spell on enemies of my level. Higher level enemies or boss type characters always have high defenses. But in the average fight all my spells work.

What doesn't work is when I only have a 50-80% of something working. It is true a 100% spell can fail due to a saving throw, but at least it actually casts. I have more of an issue with self-casting spells like Water of Life, Become Air or the Rogues haste. They can fail to cast in a combat scenario (if you have low stats for the skill) and that's difficult to handle.

my opinion is that I agree with the restrictions. Hybrids should be hard and take a penalty

you can certainly dabble but one should not expect to master more than a couple

How do you avoid a preset class?

Here, I made some screenshot guides, just look at image 1/2/3

Divinity Edit Screens

Shorter version?

Pick a preset and then edit it.

Cherry picking is definitely possible but I find it favors mage hybrids most. I stack int and speed, and just work around the limited dex/str.

I use the stance that give a large +to hit bonus when I want to melee things, thus I don't need high strength just to dish out some physical damage. I can also buff chance to hit some more with Bless. Also, lucky charm increases chance to hit to a small degree. And with haste + high speed, that makes up for the boosted AP cost/lower damage to some degree. Not that I often need to deal physical damage but it's nice having the option.

I also use a small selection of man-at-arms, scoundrel, marksman skills that are useful regardless of str/dex level - the warrior's rush for example, while it doesn't knock-down much with low str, is a good mobility tool nonetheless. The warrior heal still heals for a lot without high str, I use it as a bigger/long CD heal in emergencies when my other heals are on CD or whatever. Having the extra haste from a single point spent in scoundrel is also nice.

You understand why your definition of no good is misleading, because it's a personal choice over a gaming perspective. If you'd said "I don't like the fail chance for hybrids" we'd be inclined to agree, especially as it's 10% below but 5% above the target number (meaning you don't really need your attribute higher in some cases.

Let's say you're doing int 8 dex 7 start to use some scoundrel stuff on your air nuker. The penalty is only until your dex hits 8, which it can by the time you hit level 3. Now you can go invisible, be hasted without failure, on top of smacking them in the face with a blitz bolt. Come level 7 - hopefully you find a +1 int neck or suit of leather armor and your further +1 attribute is giving you 10 int 8 dex. So on top of a lightning strike or teleporting foes away, you've got a personal haste, invisibility OR if a foe gets too close, smack em with a rogue charm (level 4 ability).

Sure, you might not get to use level 7 scoundrel spells right away, but the cost is less than you make it out to be!

My rogue/witch is much more powerful than any of my other characters.

His normal rotation is, blind, haste, invis - move behind an enemy (normally the mob with highest hp) +50%more dmg buff on himself, then backstab. 1-2 turns later that mob is dead. Non of my other characters can move that fast while invis and then kill something within 2 turns.

I only made my ranger a minor hybrid by taking 1 point in geomancer to be able to summon a spider. I took one point out of dex at character creation for int and then only ever increased her int through items.

My 2H warrior i kept purely as a warrior. I wanted her to off heal in bad situations but the warrior heal is powerful and does the job fine. I wanted the ranger reposition ability on her, but phoenix dive does that just fine so no need to hybrid.

It's a fact that hybrid characters are different. They can do various things, but nothing too good. You want that your character can do more things, you have to accept that she/he will never be such strong in one of ways than a single class character. Something for something. This is simply realistic.

The main change I would like to see is self-buffs not being X% chance due to low str/dex/int. Save that for offense. That way you can use the myriad of magic buffs on any character without random failure should you choose.

Also, spells that affect the environment rather than enemies should not need int to be effective either. With the game's elemental system all characters should be able to have some elemental control.

Might need some other changes to balance that, like having to specialize more into specific magic schools - I've gotten away with only a single point in each for a long time with no issue.

An alternative could be talents that allow you to use Int/Dex/Str to determine the success of more skills. You wouldn't get the boosted damage, and you'd trade a talent for it. This is a nice balance, as it doesn't spread you too thin like trying to split between two of these stats does currently.

Also I think many of the Marksman, Scoundrel, Man-At-Arms abilities need lower cooldowns, mages have so much more diversity of short/mid/long CD options. I can drop rain down and spam 1 CD attacks that have a high chance of electrocuting or freezing enemies.

Midnight oil is also a little bit of an overpowered crutch right now IMHO. Basically anything melee doesn't get to be a threat because it has to move through a burning oil field to reach my two mages. It carried me pretty hard through the early game - hard difficulty w/two lone wolf mages.

I do think we need better low level spell/ability options as well, I'd like to be able to choose 5 or 6 not just 3, and of a larger variety. Right now it's a no brainer choosing midnight oil and flare because the others just don't compete and some don't even have real offensive spells - no option for hydro damage at all, and the geo spell is poison which is useless against the very common undead.

Last but not least, I am not sure how archers are going to ever be a consideration over mages if they have to manage a resource but aren't really any more powerful at ranged damage to make up for added tediousness.

I agree to this. Many of the non-mage skills have 10-20 turn cool downs. A lot of the mage stuff is way lower. You'd think it would be the other way around since mages have it easier already.



It can be a crutch, but pyro magic is in general. As a test I intentionally avoided it last play through. It made things harder, but fights just took longer since I couldn't fill combat with giant burning fields of death.

Alternately you can still get midnight oil and just have a mage fire staff that you attack the oil with. Though that's still cheating a tiny bit if you're trying to go without pyro.



I agree, but on another hand it makes sense - the spells mirror the leaving system somewhat in the 3/4/7/10 vein. It would be nice to have them more spread out though. It's a long wait between level 4 & 7 sometimes.

Mostly I'm just annoyed that the majority of the spells vendor sell are spells you CAN'T use yet. I'm level 3 or 4 and looking for things like ice shard, or bless, but no, it wants to give me 90% level 7 or 10 spells. so I have to wait forever just to get the spells for my level. I find this silly as I've gone some playthroughs not getting a low level spell until I'm level 7 or 8. And this is with consistently checking the vendors every time I'm in town.

Perhaps this is just a downside to RNG. Before they had the vendors selling too many duplicate spell books, but at least you could find the spells you wanted a lot more consistently. Now I find it hard to do.



Rangers are actually really powerful. I was skeptical at first, but I ran a mage/ranger combo and found it very effective. They start a bit slow (like warriors) but become pretty epic. My level 7 ranger rushed Marksman 5, so he has the 3AP bow talent. Since he has such high perception he starts combat with 12 AP, so he can fire 4 times. (his recovery AP is good as well.) With 100% chance to hit and a 25% crit chance, he crits often. And with an elemental bow (common at that level) you can do all kinds of cool effects for free, electrocute water, set fire to people, chance to bleed, blind, curse, burn, etc.

I was at first annoyed that elemental arrows cost as much as a spell book, but were a one time use rather than a permanent fixture. But between your ability to craft your own on the cheap (about 150g) and the arrow recovery talent, and that there's lots of arrows around in the world (especially the orc beach) I found I had a great supply of special arrows.

Whatever the case, mages tend to attack once or twice max per turn. My ranger could generally eliminate an enemy every turn with 3-4 regular arrows, and use special arrows as needed. They offer other uses as well since they have a lot of cure spells for all the various diseases, crippling effects and poison. And you gain a mute spell for mages later on too. Neat stuff.

Lastly between the high dex and a possible dodge talent you are very hard to hit. Their survivability is quite strong through stats (and/or a talent) without the need for defensive spells. Magic of course still hits you, but physical attacks would miss very often on my ranger.

OP describes how a hybrid is in this game vs a pure bred and that is exactly how hybrids are supposed to work. You surrender high-end #'s with more versatility in what you can do move to move. I've found I like the versatility over the best possible #'s most of the time. Why? Because for me many times in battle the best move isn't your pure classes move, but something else. If Hybrids were just as strong plus the versatility, there would be no use for pure breds. Not sure what the issue is here?

For example something simple like everyone having the Teleport spell is highly tactical and powerful with simply a single point. The penalties doesn't make a skill useless if you can't get to the pre-req.

/this! very much so.

I come in on the other side of the spell buying issue. I don't want my spells to all come from a vendor. I think there should be a very small number of highly random spells available on the vendor and most of them should have to come from adventuring in the world. Learning your spells from an ancient crypt or an enemy sorcerer's tower is the type of immersion I'm looking for out of my mage experience.