Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General The Perfect Party

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. 🤷‍♂️

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. ✌

The fourth character would be intelligence-based because you need 2 physical damage dealers and 2 magic damage dealers to be balanced in terms of actual gameplay - not a theoretical, "on paper only" concept of balance.

The game has about 34 Talents and you can have 5 Talents each, so 20 Talents. There are 7 Civil Abilities and you have points to max one. There are 17 Combat Abilities and you get the points to max out two. But not all Talents and Abilities are balanced with each other or are worth taking. Again - that's actual balance, not theoretical.

Physical damage dealers want maximum Warfare on both - not just one. The probably-ideal Civil Skill balance is Persuasion, Loremaster, Thievery, Lucky Charm.

Thanks for your answer, Stabbey. You seem to know what you're talking about.
A perspective from more experienced players is exactly what I was hoping to get here.

You mentioned that both physical damage dealers should get Warfare. Now I want to know about all the other Combat Abilities. Is there any place where I could find a list? Maybe another thread on the forum.

Another thing that I wanted to talk with you is that on the trailer for Divinity Original Sin 2 ( https://youtu.be/bTWTFX8qzPI?t=22 ), they show a party made of a Ranger, a Fighter, a Rogue and an Enchanter. And it might sound dumb, but I feel like that is the archetypal party that they are suggesting to the player. 1 Strength based, 2 Finesse based and 1 Intelligence based. Would that be less balanced than 1 Strength, 1 Finesse and 2 Int? They could probably do some elemental damage with grenades and special arrows, I don't know if it would be enough though.

For a list of that stuff, a wiki is a good place to look.

Warfare's gimmick is that it's 5% damage per point is multiplicative, instead of additive. Here's how that works. The Two-Handed weapon skill, that increases your damage by 5% per point. If you have, say, 5 points in it, your damage is 100% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% = 125%. For Warfare, if you have 5 points, that increases your damage like this ((((100% * 1.05) * 1.05) * 1.05) * 1.05) * 1.05 = ... um... 127.63%.

All characters have two armor types, physical and magical, which absorb all damage of those respective types and block all status effects of those types. If you have 3 characters dealing physical damage and one character dealing magical damage, the physical armor of someone targeted by the physical damage dealers will be going down much faster than the magic armor targeted by the magic attacker.

There are some skills which let Rogues do magic damage, and archers can use magic arrows to hit the magic armor, but it will cost a lot of consumables for every fight and it will split the focus of the ranger and/or rogue. You'd need to spend a substantial amount to replace the grenades and arrows spent. I suppose it COULD be done, but that's a lot more effort compared to just having a second caster.

Oh I didn't know that Warfare scales like that.

About the list, I already know the wikis. I was asking for a list of what Combat Abilities would go for which character. For example, which Skills is each caster going to spec on.
In other words, what is the Skill distribution on this build that you recommend.

That's up to you to decide. Pyro and Geo work well together, as do Aero and Hydro, but since Pyro likes to set everything on fire, and Hydro likes to drench everything in water, some care needs to be taken to make sure they don't interfere with each other.

You get enough skill points to use on two schools of magic, I don't recommend single-element mages because of resistances or immunities.

ok thanks

I prefer versatility. The archer is fantastic for this. First bows are OP in the game. Second, as Stabbey mentions, they can use arrows to do elemental damage. Just get yourself some arrow heads and a water barrel or barrel of ooze and your have water arrow heads or poison arrow heads respectively. Thus it is pretty cheap to keep a plentiful supply of them. A couple points into Aero and you can pick up a couple skills that combo with water to keep opponents stunned.

A summoner is also versatile because depending where you summon the incarnate it can do your choice of damage type. This means you can pick any target and go after their weakness. This does involve a bit of preplanning your battles.

Also keep in mind that each of your 3 pillars has more than one set of weapons. You can have 2 strength characters with one focusing two handed weapons while the other focuses single handed weapons and either shield or second one handed weapon in the off hand. For intelligence, one character can use wands while the other uses staffs. Finesse has a choice of bows, daggers and spears. Despite having the best melee weapon reach in the game, I would avoid the spear as most of melee used strength as an augmenter and not finesse. Scoundrel does melee finesse, but it only works for daggers.

Any weapon based skill will use the stat of the equipped weapon (strength, finesse or intelligence).

I have to agree with you, archers are OP in this game.

The spear is a mystery for me. I never used it in any rpg. I don't know why it is buffed by Finesse, I feel like it's more of a Strength weapon. I bet the spear has a well built place for her in the game, but I don't know where is this place. And I'm not planning to go there in the near future.

The spear is Finesse to add more options to the game, it makes Rogues and Rangers proficient in them, and it allows for the existence of Finesse-based warriors, who have additional range. In fact, there's one class build called "Warden" which switches between spears and bows as their weapons, whichever is good for the right situation.

Technically speaking, bows should be Strength-based since it takes strength to pull back on the bowstring and hold it, but how many people complain about that in a game?

Quite. If anything, it's swords that require more finesse IRL as even large swords are nimble weapons requiring a lot of skill and very far from the 30+ lb iron clubs they're sometimes depicted as.

Oh, so that's how the spear works. Good to know.

About the Attribute-Weapon connections for bow and sword, Stabbey and vometia make good points, but I still agree with the game. The sword looks more like a strength weapon for me than the bow. Because the strength applied on the target comes directly from the arm of the swordsman, they are more physically connected. While the bow has the string as a propulsor, as an intermediary. The bow resembling a fire weapon, where the job of the shooter is more to aim than apply force.
So it actually has always been easy for me to picture the bow as a finesse weapon. Attributing finesse to aim and completely forgetting about the pulling arm part. Now the crossbow, I don't know much about weapons, but I think it doesn't need any pulling right? So... pure finesse right? Pure finesse 😄. Theoretically. Take it from someone that never touched a crossbow.

One could make an argument that a crossbow is essentially a weapon for the unskilled; obviously it's not quite like that but it doesn't require the stamina and ballistic understanding of a longbowman nor the finesse and endurance of a swordsman. It's more a sort of proto-firearm that lets its user focus more on the target than how to actually deal with it.

In terms of strength, it varies depending on the crossbow. Smaller ones are made ready by holding the front on the ground by means of a "stirrup" and yanking the rope over the pawl; larger ones typically have a (usually detachable) winch of some sort to do the same thing which obviously takes a lot longer to make ready but is a lot more powerful. I dare say that it's possible some very strong people may be able to do so by hand but definitely not routinely.

I hasten to add that I haven't fired a crossbow myself but I have handled one and had it demonstrated to me up close. They are pretty serious business. I do own several swords but have no idea how to use them and thankfully I've never been entrusted with a longbow.

If you own several swords you're definitely the authority here, vometia. Your word is final.

I'm not sure I'd trust the authority of someone who leaves her swords out of their scabbards and then trips over them!

The earliest crossbows, even large ones, didn't have the wench. One had to stick both feet in the stirrup, sit on the ground, and straighten the back to a laying position to cock them. Those guys were quite vulnerable.

Pretty much every argument made sense to me - nearly all games use finesse for the bow but, due to the strength issue, it took years to train a bowman. Spears in the game, the reach, as stubby said, is the main advantage - it overcomes the crowding the sometimes prevents a character from getting close enough to swing.

Oh, yeah, I forgot that crossbows were originally popularised by their early advertising campaigns: "buy Olaf's new crosse-bow! Now with complementary ale-serving wench!"

A similar method had to be employed to cock the WWII-vintage PIAT anti-tank gun, Britain's answer the the Bazooka; and of course being British, a bit of an oddity but effective enough. The idea being that the spigot would be re-cocked automatically every time it was fired but that didn't always happen. It was apparently possible to do it lying down but not very easy. Oo-er missus etc.

And yeah, archers took a lot of training and for a long time it was English law that all men must do longbow practice on Sundays. Someone claimed that technically it's still a legal requirement but there're so many urban legends about weird old laws that were never rescinded.

Oops!

"and trips over them"? 😂 Dangerous swords