Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback One DOS2 change to enrich tactical depth

Hi there!

I know DE is coming up soon and Larian probably doesn't have time to make a lot of changes, but these are two suggestions this is a suggestion based on key issues with the game that I know a lot of the community really want to see addressed.

Currently, modding cannot fix them. It's my hope that Larian will address these widely acknowledged issues or at least provide modders with the tools to do so themselves.

1. Revert the "Round Robin" initiative system

I've actually been convinced that this isn't as big a deal if the other issues are fixed. I would still like for Larian to give us the option to mod it out, however.

I know I'm not the first to suggest this, but Round Robin - the turn order system in which an enemy will always move after an ally and vice versa regardless of initiative values - has the simple problem of making Initiative worthless on every character barring one, on whom you will stack Wits in order to have them go first.

More importantly, it's contributed towards a metagame where damage trumps everything else - healing, armor regeneration and even positioning are secondary to your ability to deny the enemy their turns by CCing/killing them in turn order. This isn't such a problem in Act 1, but by Act 2 it starts becoming the far dominant strategy.

I have evidence the community wants this gone: Bluefire's No More Round Robin mod has 2,100 unique visitors and 274 current subscribers even though it completely breaks portraits (which I suspect is what deterred many visitors from downloading it, as it did me). The Discord, Reddit and even the forums are rife with discussions about this initiative system - most of them at best tongue-in-cheek and at worst highly scathing.

Bizarrely, even though the Round Robin initiative system was not present in early access, modders have been unable to find any way to revert it to the old system. If Larian doesn't plan to change the system in and of itself, I really hope they will at least consider giving modders the option.

Suggestion: Make turn order revolve exclusively around initiative. If a player is determined to play the old way, they can stack Wits. Alternatively, allow modders an easy option to revert the game to the old early access initiative system.

2. Please change or reduce exponential damage scaling

Many people have pointed out that the game scales exponentially, with damage and HP values increasing by a progressively larger amount per level. This, while strange and frustrating when trying to fight enemies of a higher level, at least means that damage, health and healing grow at roughly the same rate. However, the ability-based damage multipliers in the game compound this problem into a real issue:

Warfare, for example, is multiplicative. This means it scales exponentially.

If you have a weapon of 50 damage, a +50% from finesse and a +50% from warfare, you do not get 100 damage: you get closer to 112. Late game, with 200 damage, +300% from finesse and +100% from warfare, you will get a whopping 1200 damage instead of 800.

Nice big damage values sound fun on paper, but it means all other aspects of the game become outpaced: once again, healing, armor and sometimes even positioning become obsolete by mid-late game. This strips the game of a lot of tactical depth and is exactly why Summoning - which is additive - falls off drastically late game by comparison.

Sadly, modders cannot fix this either due to being unable to affect the way damage bonuses multiply: we can only increase or decrease numbers, not affect how they interact. (i.e. we can change Warfare's bonus to 3%, but it will still be multiplicative and therefore function on an exponential curve)

Suggestion: There are four approaches to this that I can think of:

• 1. Reduce the damage gains from warfare and other exponential ability scaling
• 2. Buff healing and armor
• 3. Make the damage gains from warfare etc additive instead of exponential
• 4. Make healing, armor and max health scale exponentially in similar fashion

None of these are perfect.

In 1, reducing the scaling does not remove the confusing, counter-intuitive curve that results from exponential damage - it merely adjusts it, meaning whether or not it fits correctly with the rest of the game is almost purely based on luck. It'd be an improvement, most likely, but a risky one.

2. Increasing the values of armor, health and healing would help them a lot, but would most likely make them balanced in Act 3/4 but crazy in Act 1. They will still be exponentially outscaled, just more slowly, so it will still be just as counter-intuitive for new players.

3. This is, in my opinion, the best option of the four. By making damage increases additive instead of multiplicative, you keep damage valuable while preventing the need to have an Arms Race to the ultimate 10-stack Necromancer Blood Storm combo that oneshots everything. Instead of feeling pressured to put as many points as possible into their multiplier or lose efficiency, players will build more creatively.

This can be done by simply making the multipliers apply to base damage instead of output damage. For example, a weapon of 50 damage with a 300% bonus from finesse and a 100% bonus from warfare should grant 50 + 150 + 50 = 250 instead of 50 + 150 + 200 = 400.

4. This idea, while interesting, has no immediately imaginable means. Damage is exponential because it scales with both damage stats (Str, Fin, Int) and Abilities (Warfare, Pyrokinetic etc). Health only has Constitution (and the Picture of Health talent) and Healing only has Hydrosophist. Unless an additional multiplier was added somewhat arbitrarily, this is not feasible. Furthermore, unless NPCs were given this same exponential HP scaling, they would still suffer from oneshotting. This would require a lot of case-by-case encounter redesign to apply the new multipliers and, at this stage, I doubt Larian has either the time or inclination to bother with this. (I certainly wouldn't!)

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Thank you for taking the time to read. I'm really hoping to hear some news about how these issues will be addressed - if at all - in the Definitive Edition. I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of the new version either way and plan to play the hell out of it whether or not these issues will be addressed, but I would have a far better time with the game if they were.

Thank you for all your hard work, Larian!

I for one don't find the round robin system as obnoxious as many players do. The way I see it, if we change it the alternative - purely in order of Initiative for all combatants - it means we'd just stack Initiative on *everyone* instead, which easily leads to no one on the enemy team ever getting to do anything. I honestly can't see how this is better than the way it is right now. The fact is that a cc-oriented caster alone can easily incapacitate half or more of the enemy team within his turn. If our entire party get to go before any enemy, there's not much else to say about this. The first two members Teleport and Nether Swap enemies to pull them into a bunch -> the other two mass cc the whole lot of them -> end of story.

At least there's still something delicate about Initiative in the round robin system. Within the party, it decides who goes before who, which, in turn, given a specific encounter, means which party member will go before which enemy. This has a big impact on the ability to, as you pointed out, deny enemy turn by cc'ing/killing them in turn order. If you get the chance to examine enemies' Initiative before combat, you can actually use this element to your advantage. At least there's still some sense of "strategy" here. The ultimate goal is still "none of you will get to do anything!", but at least the round robin system makes it harder to pull that off.

This is why I get the impression that the reason we hate this system is not so much because "Initiative is useless" as it is because "it makes the game harder".

I'm not opposed to a change that does improve the experience. It's just that given the way things work, simply reverting combat turn order to the old system will completely trivialize combat. I imagine a lot of other changes will have to accompany that change to ensure everything works properly.

You've all but convinced me of almost all your points. I certainly consider Round Robin secondary to changing the damage characteristics so there's more point in healing and the like.

I'm not sure if I agree on the old system trivialising combat, though. Sure, you can put a lot of wits on all of your team... but where is your damage going to go, then? Your constitution? (Assuming constitution ends up having real value, in contrast with how it works now)

If you have enough wits to go before everyone else, chances are you've cut your damage by 1/3 if not more - which signifiantly decreases the opportunities for oneshotting.

I suppose this is just a question of exact numbers and it'd require extensive testing. But I would still hope for modding support for the old initiative system so both can at least be compared by the playerbase.

Given the fact that console games need to be certified well in advance means that it almost certainly is too late for changes.


The Round Robin system itself is not the problem. The problem is that Wits and Initiative remain in the game, even though they are essentially useless because of the round robin system.

My rogue Sebille had very high Initiative and did a lot of damage. "She's a rogue, duh" - true, but I suspect you can make other builds that can achieve the same thing. But I agree that this is hard to talk about without testing the alternative system with most if not all of the encounters.


If nothing else, this is food for thought if Larian makes a new Divinity game. I really hope they keep making games like Original Sin's.

Agreed! I would love to see them make more games in general, especially (but not necessarily) a DOS3.

If you want a round robin system just put a round robin system and don't make a fake initiative system, which renders one of your attribute quite useless.

Give players the option to define in which order the chars should act and you have solved the problem.

Currently turn order might get screwed by items, if they give a certain character, to much initiative/wits.

Or at the very least, give modders a convenient option.