Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Charm is Overpowered; Here's why

I play on tactician and am level 17. I put 2 points in witchcraft on both my casters. In most of my fights I drain willpower on one NPC with my first caster and charm said NPC with my second caster. Then with my ranger I will fire one, if not two (if first is resisted) charm arrows at another enemy. With two charmed units on my side, I can just sit back and watch the show.

The reason charm is overpowered is that its not your average crowd control (CC) mechanism. Your average CC puts a unit out of action (freeze / petrify / knockdown / stun) or inhibits said unit (slow, curse). Charm has a distinct advantage. That advantage is not so much the fact that the charmed unit is CC'd. Its not even the fact that the CC'd unit in question is fighting FOR you. It is that the enemy fails to recognize that a charmed is actually an ally and focuses its damage dealing attacks on the charmed unit rather than on the human player.

My proposal to balance this would be:

1) To the extent that its possible, the enemy should freeze, petrify, stun or knock down a charmed allied unit.
2) To the extent that none of the above is possible the enemy should IGNORE the charmed unit and focus ONLY on the human controlled players.
3) The enemy should NEVER attack a charmed unit thats on its side.

In my opinion implementing the above would go a long way in reducing the overpoweredness of charm, yet still keep it as the most powerful CC as the charmed unit is still fighting FOR you (doing damage, healing) you rather than just being immobilized.

PS: btw Larian, great job on this Game :) I"ll be posting some other thoughts about my experience in general in another thread.

Give more spd to your mages, so you can cast DrainWill AND Charm in one turn by one mage. :-]

Yup, no CC should basically distract the entire enemy team. Something I'm trying to fix in next version of Scales and I think it should involves 1 new line to make enemies ignored charmed enemies (though then they wouldn't make any attempt to cc them at all, which is okay I suppose; better to try and cc the players for the most part anyway.)

I also wonder if the charmed enemy should suffer a damage penalty, perhaps depending on the charmer's level of charisma or something. So 5 charisma would be no damage penalty for charmed enemy, but 0 charisma would be -50% damage or something.

As a player presently using a witch, I think that's the worst suggestion ever made. Lol.

I'm almost there i've hit that sweet spot of lvl 17 where a lot of gear is littered with + 2 speed. I was 1 action point short of making that combo last I checked. Now I probably can pull it off with a single caster. This means that in my OP scenario I can easily have 3 charmed units from the getgo.


I have two casters that have only 2 points in witchcraft; They are aero and pyro specialists. So I get the best of both worlds.

As mentioned in the OP I hope Larian considers, at the very least, preventing the AI from attacking their own charmed units - never mind the part where they try to CC their own charmed units (though I think the latter would demonstrate true intelligence).

I'll tell you what's overpowered ... initiative. If you go first in this game, the enemy is doomed.

Kind of like playing white in chess, except that in DOS, you get the first FOUR moves.

True. That said having a single CC that can disrupt the entire enemy team is equally gamebreaking. My initiative is very high, I usually get the first 4 moves so I guess that too could use a small hit with the nerf bat. I feel charm should take precedence though.