D:OS 2 could probably use more talent ideas. In particular, I noticed that there aren't really many mage-specific talents - at least not ones lacking in major drawbacks.

I've also added in the Equivalents for Ice King and Demon for Earth and Air. I'll also make suggestions for changes on some Talents which are in the game now.


Airhead - Increase your maximum Air Resistance by 15%, decrease your Earth Resistance by 15%. Increase your maximum Air Resistance by 10%.


Berserker - As your health decreases, your damage increases.

Basically, your damage increases the closer you are to death. This idea is stolen from the Kickstarter campaign's "Juggernaut" skill set idea.

It could work something like this:

0-10% = 2.00x damage. 11-15% = 1.75x damage. 16-20% = 1.50x damage, 21-25% = 1.25x damage, 26%+ = 1.00 damage. Basically, if you’re under 25% health, the more dead you are, the more damage you can deal. This has its own inherent risk-reward because of course you’re almost dead. This should affect all damage types, including magic (initial hits, not DoT) not just melee.


Brilliant But Lazy - Increase your number of skill slots by 2 (or your Memory by whatever is enough to give you 2 skill slots), but lose 2 Strength and 2 Finesse.

This one is aimed more for pure spellcasters, and lets them "trade in" stats which they have less use for for skill slots which they need more of.


Counter Strike - Dodging an enemy melee attack gives you a 25% chance to automatically retaliate with a normal attack.

This only works if you have a melee weapon equipped of course. This could be “fun” to give to some enemies as well! The counter can be blocked or dodged (Counter-counter-counter-counter...).


Grounded – Increase your maximum Earth Resistance by 15%, decrease your Air Resistance by 15%. Increase your maximum Earth Resistance by 10%


Healer - Increase the power of your healing spells by 25%, but attack spells do 25% less damage. PLUS Physical and Magical armor increased by 20% -AND/OR- Cooldowns for Healing spells decreased by 1 turn.


Shield Bash – (Requires a shield equipped) Blocking an enemy melee attack gives you a 25% chance to automatically retaliate with a bash.

This deals 25-50% of your weapon damage as crushing damage. The bash can be blocked or dodged.


****

What Talent ideas do you have?

See also this discussion on returning Talents

I also am not a fan of Walk it Off returning unchanged. I think that the downside of positive status effects also losing a turn makes the Talent basically cancel itself out. I'd support losing the negative part of that Talent, or change how it works to something like "Decrease the duration of negative status effects by 1 turn if you move at least 10.0 meters in the current turn.

Escapist also seems underwhelming, and it still says "Incompatible with Courageous", which seems to be removed. I'd almost go as far as saying that Escapist should be combined with "Duck Duck Goose". Almost.

EDIT: Borrowed an idea from Ellery to improve Healer.

These are mostly a copy+paste from another topic. Basically, they are very rough examples of stuff I would like to see to some extent that would allow us to further define our playstyle, mostly for flavor, but also with bonuses and possible downsides/sacrifices to make it more interesting.

Barbarian: Jewelry/belts/etc gain a massive percentage of increased physical/magical defense, and the player gains increased movement rate, and massive scaling melee attack damage/crit, but can no longer wear armor, use scrolls, ranged weapons, or magic.

Duelist: Can only equip a single one handed non-blunt weapon and no shield, but gain increased damage/crit, reduced ap cost for attack, and increased dodge/parry. Receive extra penalties from being flanked, but can also backstab without daggers.

Barefisted: Can no longer use any weapons or heavy armor, gain massive bonus to dodge/fist damage/crit that scales with level, warfare and dagger skills are modified somehow to be usable with fists

Spell focus: Magic damage is increased, costs less ap to use, and cooldown is quicker, but you cannot gain any physical/magical defenses outside temporary sources, like from fortify, and have a penalty to con and movement ap.

Healer: All hostile/damaging spells refresh slower and cost more ap, but all beneficial or neutral spells refresh faster.

etc.

Does anyone actually pick the resistance related talents? especially now that CC is not related to resistance?

Out of the ones you guys mentioned, I like Berserker and Duelist. I also like the "Move X amount to remove status effects" idea for Walk it Off . Although that defeats the purpose if you are CC'ed you can't move, so maybe it would have to be tweaked in some other way

I'm okay with the healing related talents, although there seem to only be a few healing spells compared to 95% damaging spells, so I dunno if anyone would ever conceivably take it unless the downside was reduced to like -10% damage

I feel like any of them that discourage using items (Barbarian, Barefisted) are not a great design. Items are a good mechanic in the game, and removing that mechanic really doesn't have any positive value.

That shouldn't require a talent but work like that out of the box if you choose to fight with a one-handed weapon and without a shield. Bearing shields should reduce crit-chance and dodge and increase AP costs but should also grant massive additional armour and stat bonuses.

I'm not a friend of the backstabbing thing though. I think backstabbing should only work for daggers no matter what.

Good stuff. In paticular I remember a friend being dissapointed in DOS1 that there wasn't any sort of shield bashing skills or talents.

Couple quick ideas

Dark Soul - you take no damage from cursed surfaces, but are damaged by blessed ones.

Phoenix - When you are ressurected, you deal [a ton] of fire damage in an area around you, and gain immunity to fire for 3 turns. Res trigger talents like morning person seem hard to make worth it, I know, but it seemed neat and thematic

This would actually be a downgrade. Normally, you are buffed by one surface and damaged by the other. With this talent, you would be immune to one surface and damaged by the other. So instead of positive and negative, it would just be neutral and negative.

I like this, but like charity said it is a net negative to take this talent. Should be the effects are reversed. That is still a net negative because you spent a talent point for no on paper benefit. But it could be tactically useful, and thematically fun.

It's also a net negative because halfway through Chapter 1...

Are you sure they just appear? I would like this talent and think it would be good enough to take. As soon as there is a voidwoken there is a cursed surface -> good and i only saw blessed ones if i used bless.
Dont forget that a surface gets blessed as soon as someone blessed touches it and gets cursed as soon as someone cursed touches it.

Some Talent Suggestions

Racial Enemy
========
~Elves, Humans and Dwarves get this talent and get to choose their racial enemy. The damage multiplier effects critical damage for weapon attacks. Useful for assassins and fighters etc
~Lizards regard everyone as inferior so don't get to choose this talent. They are too indifferent. Instead they get a Talent called Arrogance.

Arrogance
======
~Lizards gain +2 to all interactions with lesser species when making a demand on them by invoking a sense of superiority and a feeling of inferiority on those affected. Can only be used once on any given npc and won't work on party members.

Drunken Monkey
==========
~Keep your opponents off-guard as you lurch into the fray with a wild and unpredictable fighting style
Adds +2 to your chance to hit and +3 to your chance to dodge. There is a 50% chance you will lose an action point per turn due to the need to hurl.

Mimic
====
~Mimic an opponents actions by playing the fool and provoke them into attacking you. Useful if you want to start a fight but don't want to lose faction reputation by attacking first. Opponents who are provoked will make a rash charge in your direction. Opponents who are 2+ levels above you are immune to this talent and will laugh at you instead. Only affects humanoid races.

Most of these sound funny but i guess we will fight more humans than elves/dwarfes -> not really a choice

I like arrogance ^^

Drunken monkey sounds okay but RNG for AP/CC etc. isnt that great.

Mimic again sounds like fun but i think it would be abused too much in a game like this.

Positive. There's even mysterious voices and your party members commenting on their appearance.



Perhaps instead of "Dark Soul" reversing the effects, there could be a talent "Naturally Blessed" which reduces the damage you take from cursed surface effects by 50%. Although that might be a pretty powerful one, so it seems like that would need a downside such as (just throwing that out there) "Blessed surfaces are 25% less effective at healing you".

So many of these sound like cool ideas, but also a fundamental overhaul of your character.
Are talents not suposed to do something cool and/or usefull that doesn't fundamentally change how you play.
(I guess zombie kinda does that, but still... these things sound really hard to balance).

I agree with Skallewag there.

Stabbey's talents seem the most inline with existing D:OS talents.

My only issues are the two that require double RNG (Counter strike and Shield bash) as both of those talents require you to first get the dodge or block to have a chance of getting the talent benefit.

That being said I still like the idea of them.

A couple more ideas. Once again, I'm throwing these ideas out there, they likely would need a bunch of tweaking for balance.


Synergist AKA "Elemental Infusion" AKA "Elemental Retribution"

When standing in a surface or cloud, your next spell will inflict some additional damage based on the surface/cloud type. (This idea is really rough)


Some ideas based on specific Elemental masteries:

A Touch of Frost - Requires: Hydrosophist 10

A 5% chance for hits from any non-fire melee or spell attacks to inflict Frozen for one turn. (Check: Magic armor)


Convection - Requires: Pyrokinetic 10.
If Warm or Burning at the start of your turn, active skill cooldowns are reduced by 1 turn to a minimum of 0. If Wet, Chilled, or Frozen at the start of your turn, active skill cooldowns are increased by 1 turn.

So if after you previous turn ended, you had 3 skills on cooldown, one with 5 turns, one with 3 turns, and one with 2 turns, and you got set on fire before your next turn came back up, the cooldowns would do the usual tick down, so 4, 2, 1 turns left, then Convection would kick in and they would go to 3, 1, 0 turns. You could use that 0 turn cooldown right away.


Fully Charged - Requires: Aerothurge 10. Incompatible with Glass Cannon.

For every 25% of your maximum health that you take in Air-type damage in the course of one turn, you gain +1 Maximum and +1 Turn AP for your next turn only. Capped at +3.

Absorb electricity from surfaces - taking damage instead of being stunned - to gain 1 AP per surface cleared.

(Perhaps absorbing a surface in this way will do a flat 25% or 33% of your maximum health in air damage, bypassing magic armor, but maybe that 25/33% amount is then reduced by whatever your air resistance is?)


Made of Stone - Requires: Geomancer 10. (Possibly Incompatible with What a Rush?)

When under 30% Health, all physical damage you receive is reduced by 67%.

Hiyo, great thread~ just going to toss a few ideas I have here.

Brains, not Brawn

- Similar to your idea a +2 Memory to gain 1 spell slot and +2 Intelligence. At the cost of -2 strength and -2 Con. Less hit points to make up for added skills.


Threatening Presence

- A character with this talent would be a more likely to be focused for attacks. Great for a tank.

The Pure

- This talent is meant for a healer / buffing type character. All Physical and Magical armor granted is increased by 20% all healing by 25-30%. But at a cost. Damage is reduced by 75%. Also less likely to be targeted by enemies.


Icy Stare

- Talent would reduce damage slightly 10% but greatly increase the change to freeze targets.

75% damage loss sounds pretty harsh and feels to expensive for the benefits. I'm not sure if a purely supportive role would be really usefull. Heals are only needed if someone is wounded, at higher level so only at about third round and buffs like Fortify are to scarce usable, they have pretty tough cooldown.

I guess Icy Stare would be pretty pointless at current state, because the chance to freeze them is either 100% or 0%

O_O Oh, I play a pure support character. like the only attack spell she has it the starting ones.. which I plan on lose once we can choose out starting spells.

the freeze thing I didn't know! now I need to go freeze more people.

Some interesting ideas Ellary. I especially like Brains, not Brawn although I would increase the penalties somewhat because it is a great advantage having more memory compared to the penalty.

My my mage was quite purely hydromage, having offence and defence, mainly because CC is still the best support and Warlord totally broken at current state. She healed, shielded, teleported, froze, slowed and set everything on fire.

In DOS2 you just need to get rid of all the magic armor to freeze for sure (exception immunities of course).

In DOS1 there were chances of having the effect and chances of withstanding the effect.


You exchange 4 skill points for 4 other skill points, so it seems quite equal.

well I don't want to take away to much con as -4 would leave a character with like 30-40 Hp. maybe take away -4 strength and -2 con.

Warlord o.o I am going to have to try this.

See also this discussion on returning Talents.




That seems okay, pretty similar to mine so it's likely Larian would only put one of them in. Either would be fine.




I think that would need some kind of significant bonus to Armor and/or Constitution to make up for the increased attacks you'll take. It also seems like that might work better as an active skill so you could choose when to use it.




That's similar to my "Healer" suggestion above, but I only went as far as decreasing damage by 25%. 75% is far too steep a penalty for the benefits. But I might steal borrow the increased armor idea for "Healer".




Ah, but there's this very lovely spell called "Decaying Touch". Stick that onto an enemy and your healer suddenly becomes a damage dealer.




I don't think higher penalties are needed.

It's one skill slot and +2 Intelligence. That's not really much, in exchange for -2 Strength and -2 Constitution. Remember that higher level skills will start costing Memory up to 10 per skill.

You totally should try Warlord, as long you can. It's quite a rush.


I don't really like decaying touch that much. I prefer to keep my heals for healing, there are far better ways to kill enemies of or CC them. Decaying touch only debuffs but nothing more, seems pretty weak. Cooldowns from healing spells aren't that short. And you need to get rid of magic armor first anyway. If the enemie has no magic armor, you can CC it anyway.

Hmmm... what if the Healer talent lowered the cooldown on healing skills by 1 turn? I should ask and see if that is possible to do, if healing skills have a special tag.

I would be all over that o.o that would make my restoration 3 turns. Which is how I think it should be.

Harvester of Souls (Necromancer 10) - Killing an enemy grants you +X to your highest stat for Y turns.

I love this idea!

Just as all the elements get their own talent specialization, so to should necromancer.

Though that begs the question if you should be allowed an elemental taletent and the necro or just one of the five options

Nice Necromancer Talent idea.





Warriors are allowed multiple talents beneficial to Warriors, I don't see why mages and hybrids have to only pick one of five. Mages should be allowed to generalize in more than one school.

You should be able to get any you can afford to get, except for those who kind of counter each other out or would be to strong as synergy.

Slow and Steady - Requires: Warfare 7. Incompatible with The Pawn

Decrease movement by 1.5 2.5 meters per AP, but boost Physical and Magical armor by 50-100%.

The idea for this one is to allow for a more defense-focused warrior by boosting their magical armor, but decreasing how far they can move and not giving them the free movement from Pawn. The decrease amounts to 6.0 10.0 fewer meters per 4 AP.

EDIT: Bumped the penalty up to 2.5 meters because of all the movement skills warriors have.


Zeroed In - Requires: Huntsman 7.

Increase your damage by 10% per consecutive normal attack. Caps at +30%. Bonus carries over to next turns (Maybe a "Zeroed In" status icon). Saving AP or moving normally does not reset the bonus, but switching targets, fleeing the battle, using a skill (including racial and movement skills), special arrow, or grenade instantly cancels the bonus back to 0 (no bonus damage for those actions). (Killing the target also resets the bonus back to 0, but after the kill.)

Bonus is additive with height bonus, not multiplicative. (If you have a Zeroed In status of +20% and a Height bonus of 40%, your total bonus is 40 + 20 = 60%.

I think Slow and Steady is to strong, there are so many skill you could learn to relocate yourself without having to move by foot, I think the negativ aspect would hardly make any difference for the warrior. Warriors alone have 3 such skills at least for such purpose. Also don't think there is a need to disable the pawn for it. Slow and Steady totally reduces the worth of The Pawn, because movement range of the Pawn get diminished as well.

Zeroed In sounds interesting, but a multiplicative Bonus would be 40 + (20% of 140 = 28), so a total of 68

So using flesh sacrifice would cancel it aswell? Perhaps your AP are full, so you need to make space first. Also tactical retreat would be kind of a movement. I think any kind of movement should cancel the bonus, because you changed your line of firing. Boost who don't effect your position should not cancel it.


By the way we should really decide wich thread we will use now for this stuff. Or at least someone needs to move it finally to the suggestions board.

It's 1 AM and I should be asleep but I'll answer some of those points with my addled brains.



I can't think of the third warrior movement skill. I'll think about this one some more. Maybe reducing the movement further would help, relocation skills do have cooldowns so they can't be used constantly. Plus the more Memory slots you spend on relocation skills, the fewer you have on the more powerful skills. That in itself reduces offensive power a bit, doesn't it?




Err... right. That's still more than 60, though. So it's the smaller bonus which is what I meant to say.




Using Flesh Sacrifice before making your two+ consecutive shots would not cancel the bonus, and you would retain the effects of Flesh Sacrifice. Using it after making the two+ consecutive shots (and triggering the bonus) would because it is a skill.

Using Tactical Retreat would cancel the bonus because that's a skill. Using any skill with the bonus up cancels it. I do think using your AP to move should not cancel the bonus.

My reasoning for allowing direct movement is that enemies can move around and get themselves out of range. This bonus is about Zeroing In on one specific enemy and targeting them relentlessly with regular attacks. I think chasing them down to continue firing counts.

Phoenix Dive, Battering Ram and Blitz Attack, I believe.

at this point I honestly would be happy with one that reduces how enemies target a character. Trying to do a solo play through Classic mode and even if I have my Healer / buffer in the back.. they continually go for her.

IKR!?! Stench was a lifesaver! But hopefully they can make it useful in PvP, too, like "enemies that hit you get knocked back 1 meter", or "has a chance to fear enemies until they run 1m away" (so it doesn't get rid of their whole turn), with a drawback similar to the first game!

I've had another idea for a talent

Displaced Image
===========
An ability to displace your image up to three feat from its location. Could be useful in combat or for a nefarious rogue to distract. The image cannot perform any action itself and will disappear if attacked or interacted with.

How about:

Weaponmaster
--------------------
Your first Weapon switch per turn costs no AP

----------------------------------------------------

Let's say you start off with your Bow/Crossbow, fire off a special arrow and then equip your
Two hander and Bullrush into the fray taking names, or you have your sword and shield and your physical armour runs out and generally being useless (Not really a fan of the Parmour/Marmour situation) you then equip your two hander to burst them down or even a bow/crossbow/wand(?) with Tactical Retreat/Cloak and Dagger/Phoenix Dive then you can get away to take a shot.

Mainly had One Man Army in mind when I thought of this talent but it can still work otherwise and gives you more ap to work with.

Not really 100% thought this talent through (How it would work with dual wield, prerequisites and also not knowing exactly what One Man Army does) but I liked the concept

I like it! It would make spear huntsman a lot more viable, as well as bow rogue and sword-and-board/two hander warrior!

" Death Thrall"

a talent that turns the enemies you kill into zombies that fight for you, and the type of damage they do determines the kind of damage the zombie does.

This talent would require a medium to high number of points into Necromancy, as it would be intended to be a mid to late game talent choice.

Talents are passive. I did make some Talent suggestions for DOS 1 which had Talents granting you a skill, but I've made a conscious decision to avoid those this time. This suggestion is clearly an active skill.




Neat idea.




Tricky. Adding extra allied bodies to the field could be incredibly helpful if only for distraction purposes, but it could rapidly become unbalanced if the percent chance of creating a zombie is too high.

"Talents are passive. I did make some Talent suggestions for DOS 1 which had Talents granting you a skill, but I've made a conscious decision to avoid those this time. This suggestion is clearly an active skill."

Your right it is indeed a skill (me and my fuzzy thinking). If I rework it I imagine it could be a talent. Maybe the displaced image is automatically activated if the player starts sneaking there by making it a passive talent.

I should preface this list by saying that I personally really like talents that change the way your characters strategize. So a lot of these are significant changes. My reasoning, is that it makes each run feel substantially different and fresh if you have to play it differently. It seems that so far in DOS 2 the talents have been very toned down so they don’t have a huge effect on your playstyle. I think players should have the choice to take talents that really DO effect how you play the game.


Blind Seer –champion is permanently blind and only has a short sight range but can cast spells through other party members as if standing where the allied character is. Does not suffer blindness sight debuff when casting through allies (Personally I love talents like this that fundamentally change the way you play a run. You can cast spells through your tank for example but you are far more vulnerable if you get jumped on)

Vengeful Shadow – 10% chance on taking combat damage, that a shadow will appear and perform an attack on the enemy who inflicted the damage, before disappearing again. Damage dealt scales with maximum hp.

Blood rage – any time you take damage equal to 20% of your maximum health, your next ability deals 50% bonus damage

Hemihypertrophy – can wield a 2 handed weapon in one hand, but the other hand can only ever hold a shield. After all modifiers are calculated, your total move speed per AP is halved and you can never dodge attacks (and maybe your character has a permanent limp?). (This is actually a medical condition where one side of your body grows much more than the other side). Another example of a talent I’d love to see because of how it changes the way you fight. You could even push this even further by reducing your max AP by 1, but every third attack deals bonus damage (scaling on strength) and knocks the target down. Obviously this idea is a HUGE change to playstyle but overall it’s definitely a buff.

Raging Healer – after healing allied party members with 4-5 skills, your next damaging spell automatically crits

Leprosy – each time you take damage, all enemies within 1 meter become diseased for 2 turns but everyone’s attitude to you is reduced by 30 (or maybe more?). Alternatively, the cost for such a powerful talent could just be a -1 to an attribute (constitution maybe?). Or maybe all characters within 1 meter become diseased including allied characters, and have no attribute penalty.

Arachnids curse – every time you deal damage there is a 5% chance you will summon a shadow spider beside the target, AND beside yourself. Shadow spiders have no allegiance and will attack the closest visible target (besides another shadow spider). Conversely, they could be voidwoken spiders who won’t attack other voidwoken creatures but I don’t know if this will fit with the story later down the track. Personally I like they idea of them being voidwoken, but I don’t know what Larian has planned story wise. Another way to do this is to instead deal 10% bonus shadow (or void) damage on all attacks and abilities, but the spider only spawns beside you when it procs.

Soul Tethered – designate another character, all damage and healing received (not status effects) is divided equally between the two soul teathered characters. While this is definitely a buff if you put on two weaker party members so they can’t get bursted down so easily, its possible it may need a buff as well, like +1 constitution. But it may be strong enough without it.

I’ll do it myself! (or Contempt for the Weak) – can no longer cast healing or shielding spells on allies, but your spells gain a 20-30% damage increase for each party member that is incapacitated (stunned, knocked down etc)

These are a few ideas I spent some time on, and I really hope talents become a lot more significant

Talent Suggestions:

One-handed 3:"Swift" On each attack you have 50% chance to steal a random consumable out of the target's pocket.

Dual-wielding 5: "Surprise Attack" Whenever you jump into direct proximity of an enemy you gain an extra attack.

Two-handed 8:"Executioner" Whenever you attack you gain an additional swing for 30% damage if it would kill the target. (Check and damage explicitly after the attack)

Ranger 3:"Awareness" You gain a "large amount of" Initiative.

Physical armor 5:"Bulwark" Whenever combat starts or you equip a shield you raise your shield, which reduces incoming damage by 90% until your next turn.

Pyromancy 8:"Bonfire" You gain additional range as well as truesight over burning areas

Geomancy 8:"Bombardement" Your spells have a rate of 30% to reduce their targets' AP by 1.

Hydrosophist 5:"Minor Immortality" Whenever your vitality receives damage you heal yourself by 30% of said damage.

Necromancy 5:"Devourer" Whenever you gain a relevant amount of health (excluding passive effects) your attributes increase by 2 until the end of the fight.

Aerotheurge 10:"Lightning Rod" Yeah... stun immunity.

Trigger schedule as follows: Damage->Minor Immortality->Death->Comeback Kid->Executioner

For talents:

defensive specialist: while wearing a shield, every time you are attacked reduces cool downs on -specific skills-

1 hand focused: While wearing nothing in your offhand, Increase 1 hand damage by x% and item stats by x%

Duelist: While equipped with two weapons, counterattack the first melee attack against you by each opponent.

My ground: The first time an enemy advances within x of you for the first time in a round. Advance to melee range with them.

I'd prefer more civil & speech talents to be added.

One of the things i didn't like about D:OS is how insignificant civil and speech mechanics are in the game. Moreover everything is thrown to "mule" characters while your main party builds pure combat ignoring the civil skills. I'm glad they overhauled the civil skills a bit. Civil skills should be a mandatory and seperate progression in cRPGs.

Womanizer: Unlocks special conversation options with female NPCs. Player can discover additional clues, hints, treasures or may coax female NPCs to carry out certain actions. Provides a +5% dmg boost to all female companions in the party. Player takes -5% less damage against female opponents.

Seductress: Unlocks special conversation options with male NPCs. Player can discover additional clues, hints, treasures or may seduce male NPCs to carry out certain actions. Provides a +5% Phy/Mag armor boost to all male companions in the party. Player deals +5% more damage against male opponents.

You shall not pass: Increases range for Attack of Opportunity by 30% and regenerate 5 Phy/Mag Armor at the start of a combat round as long as the character does not move in previous round.

Master Crafter: 5% chance to increase item quality by 1 tier when crafting an armor or weapon(i.e. crafting uncommon crits to rare quality).

Blacksmith's Romance: Equipping self-crafted Weapon or Armor grants +5% dmg or phy/mag armor respectively to said item.

Disable: Sneak attacks have a chance to disarm opponents for 2 turns(removes weapons, can only use fists). Chance increases with higher Thievery skill. Opponent gets immunity against further disarms till end of combat. Applicable only against enemies with equipped weapons.

Shifting Shadows: When character is below 50% HP and is attacked, there is a chance to evade damage and instantly teleport the character randomly anywhere within 5m radius. Will only proc once per combat turn(can be increased). Proc chance & maximum no. of procs per combat turn increases with Telekinesis skill. (Due to random nature of the teleport, characters may end up in a much worse situation, i.e. right beside an opponent or in electrified puddle)

I love these and I totally agree with your opinion on the civil stuff

Good ideas ImariKurumi! I wish these were in the game already.

@ ImariKurumi. I particularly like the crafting and you shall not pass. While the womanizer/seductress are fun. They lack punch to me. Unless those 'hidden secrets and options' are on the level of what is offered by pet pal (my personal favorite).

I do find that most talents are a bit drab, and like the look of your suggestions.

I wrote this in a different post, but I might as well dump it here (SORT of a repost?). It fits better with the Topic~
[* is a reworked Talent. + is a new Talent.]

+Anti-Venom: Immunity to Poison/Acid. Cannot be taken with Demon, Ice King, Loyalty or Superstition.
*Bigger and Better: Gives one extra Attribute every (x) level.
*Comeback Kid: Once per combat, block a killing blow and restore the character to 50% health and remove all debuffs.
*Demon: Immunity to Flaming debuff. Cannot be taken with Anti-Venom, Ice King, Loyalty or Superstition.
*Escapist: Ignore Opportunist.
*Ice King: Immunity to Freezing debuff. Cannot be taken with Anti-Venom, Demon, Loyalty or Superstition.
*Glass Cannon: Lower total vitality by 30% instead of being vulnerable to all CC.
*Leech: Heal 5% of total health for x blood. Ideally, spending 1-3 AP on movement should fully heal you with a lot of blood nearby.
+Loyalty: Immunity to Charm. Cannot be taken with Anti-Venom, Demon, Ice King or Superstition.
+Masochist: While affected by Bleeding or Flaming debuff, deal 10% more damage and gain 1 AP.
*Morning Person: Allows the revived character to take their turn before that round of combat ends. Similar to if they delayed their turn.
+Superstition: Immunity to Cursed Debuff. Cannot be taken with Anti-Venom, Demon, Ice King or Loyalty.
+Vile: When struck, create a pool of poison at your feet. If already standing in poison, propagate the poison field.
*Walk It Off: At the start of your character's turn, spend 1 AP to remove a debuff from your character. This can happen no more than 1 time a turn.
+Weapon Expert: Equipping Weapons in combat no longer has an AP cost.
*What a Rush: While under the effects of Adrenaline or Rage, move 35% faster and gain 1 AP. Does not stack.

I have a talent suggestion for making the hybrid classes more useful and less punishing. Right now playing a Battlemage you are punished for having to put attribute points into strength and intelligence. Having a talent that combines both strength and intelligence getting the average and then assigning it to the lower stat so you can still focus in the direction you want your hybrid class without being completely punished. (Example: if you have 20 int and 10 str with this talent you would have 20 int and 15 str). To balance it maybe you have to meet certain class/combat skills criteria.

Wouldn't that just make you put every point into int and get 1.5x the effect from it? In the current version of the game, players can already reach way over 30 in one stat, so we are talking about potentially 20+ free attribute points, compared to the 1 or 2 points from other talents...


How about a talent that gives you 3 additional skill slots, but in return there is a chance that you will activate a different one of your memorized skills instead every time you use an ability?

I would also love to see a way to decrease the cooldown of the skills - maybe that would be an option for 1h users to offset their decreased damage.

The new armor system has the potential for many armor related talents, like
-chance to apply status effects despite armor
-straight up ignoring armor at the cost of decreased damage or no status effects
-"AP/HE mode" for an archer to switch between increased damage to armor and high damage vs unarmored targets (probably better as a skill)
-restoring your own (magic?) armor with part of the damage you deal to armored targets / when you kill something
...

Every ability tree (civic included) should have a talent associated with it. Higher requirement ones (3+, item bonuses don't count) do offer a nice reward for deep investment, where right now, there's nothing to reach for. Of course, it's alpha and end game stuff isn't implemented, but I'm just hoping it doesn't stay this way since talents have remained somewhat lackluster.

Random idea:

Idiot Savant: +6-10 Memory, -2-5 Int, Dex and Strength

Fast Metabolism: Stat boost Potions only last one or two turns, but have 1.5x-2x the effect.

Myopic Mage: -25-50% spell range, but 25-30% more effect (damage, healing, radius maybe)

Protector: You protect allies within 5-10m from 25-50% of incoming damage, taking it for yourself instead.

Protector seems more suited as a skill book than a talent and Idiot Savant seems a bit OP, otherwise I quite like those suggestions.

Sting: normal damage inflicted on armored characters (ie bypass armor) OR inflicts status effects even to armored enemies

First Blood: character gets first turn. in case of multiple characters/npcs with it, enemies get priority.

Berserk Mage: AP cost of magic skills is doubled, but they inflict 50% more damage.

Alchemist: all potions/ non-food items have their potency doubled

Expert Mage: all magic skills cooldowns are reduced by half

Master Sorcerer: all magic skills, including source skills, cost 1 AP (something could also be done for memory...)

Impatient: permanent Haste Effect on character

Bulwark: permanent 50% of physical armor value (cannot be decreased)

Aegis: permanent 50% of magical armor value (cannot be decreased)

Mirror: reflects all magic skills, beneficial or not, to the caster (excluding some, maybe source/void skills?)

Gushing: permanent Regen effect

Aesculapius: immune to negative status effects, all of them.

I really should get around to posting my thoughts on some of the Talent suggestions from people. I've been meaning to do that for almost two months but I kept getting sidetracked whenever I found a Talent I wasn't sure what to say about.

In the meantime, I'll first reply to the latest one.



Direct health damage is what kills enemies, so a no-downside to bypass armor to deal direct damage to health seems a little too strong. Using the "status effects through armor" variation is better, although most of the point of armor is to prevent statuses from landing.




There are gripes about needing a lot of initiative to go before enemies, and the initiative system might need tweaks, but flat-out making initiative irrelevant might be a bit much.




Interesting. I'd have to think about this. You'd be spending 2.0 times the AP to do 1.5 times the damage. It would also completely cut you off from using any 4 AP skills.




This one seems okay, though maybe it should probably apply only to potions with temporary effects (not the Blood Rose permanent attribute-boosting potion).




I think this one would need a downside attached otherwise it would be a must-have for all primary casters - especially given the lack of other good magic-oriented Talents. Cooldowns are also the primary mechanism for balance, so a two-tier system for power would be an issue.




Broken. Too overpowered. It breaks the other balance mechanism.




Too overpowered. It would need a substantial downside.




I'm not entirely sure what that means. Do you mean that it boosts every point of X armor by 50%, effectively increasing your total by 50%?

What does "cannot be decreased" mean? That your armor can never go below 50%? Under the current way armor works, wouldn't that render you immune to all status effects of that type?



Immunity to magic damage and CC. Too OP.




This one might work, it depends on how much you regen per turn. Too little and it's useless. Maybe limit it to 20% or 25% at a maximum. Might be interesting to put onto some boss enemies.




Broken. Too overpowered.

I've had these ideas for a while, just found time to put these to text.

Quick Reflexes: +10 Initiative

My basis for the +10 is that another Talent gives you 2 Attribute points, which if put to Wits gives you +5 Initiative. But because Wits give you 2.5% crit chance to go with that, I feel like that justifies doubling the Initiative bonus to that. So, Quick Reflexes would be roughly equal to Bigger and Better, but with an exclusive focus on Initiative. It could be a decent late-game attribute for warriors with low Initiative, for example.

"Gushing" seems like a straight upgrade of Leech to me, given that it's permanent and applies everywhere. But I do like the idea. Just make the regen something like 10%, at most 15% of your max health.

I have some complaints about a few of the existing Talents as well. Ice King, Demon etc. are really underwhelming and not really worth the Talent slot, in my opinion. I think there should be an additional effect to them, thematic to their element. For example, a character with Ice King is granted additional physical / magical armor (or both) when standing on a surface of the corresponding element. Something like a 25% increase should be reasonable but not overpowered, given that the Talent doesn't make one invulnerable to the element. Demon would give the character a permanent haste while standing on fire, and so on. In correct form it would look something like:

Ice King: A character with Ice King has an extra 15% Water Resistance, but takes a 15% penalty to Fire Resistance. In addition the maximum Water Resistance is raised by 10. When standing on a frozen surface, a character with Ice King gains a 20% increase to his/her physical armour.
Incompatible with Demon.

Demon: A character with Demon has an extra 15% Fire Resistance, but takes a 15% penalty to Water Resistance. In addition the maximum Fire Resistance is raised by 10. When standing on a fiery surface, a character with Ice King gains Hasted. The effect will end when the character leaves the fiery surface.
Incompatible with Ice King.

Alternatively, one could tweak these by triggering the extra effects when Chilled / Warm, but also lowering their effects. Say, you get 10-15% increase to physdef while Chilled and Hasted when Warm. Admittedly I don't quite know how I would balance this tweak with Hasted; perhaps give it 3 rounds of Hasted instead of permanent Hasted as when standing on fire?

Well the problematic 3 could always be fixed.

I also was unaware that
a) 4 AP magic skills exist
b) AP upper limit is actually hardcodeD?

A bit OP is not too bad. Especially considering enemies might get them too.

In my opinion, a bunch of them need some tweaking to be balanced. My opinion is not that only the three I described simply as broken/OP are the ones which would need fixing.

I don't know if 4 AP skills exist. But neither do you. What I do know is that we're only seeing "Act 1" skills, not high-powered, up-to-10-Memory-Requiring end-game skills, some of which might require 4-6 AP. I'm also pretty certain that the 4-AP per turn and 6 AP max is indeed fixed barring specific exceptions (Glass Cannon, Adrenaline).

Metamagic (Or Augmentor) - You may heighten a spell by adding more AP to increase its damage, 1AP adds +15% (or something similar) Limit this by requiring at least 2-3 points in any one magic school.

Elemental Augmentor- For an extra 2AP, you may substitute one elemental damage type for another, but this element must be taken from a skill you know. (So PCs could, if they had blitz bolt and fireball, cast an electric "fire" ball for 6 AP, and other combinations like that.) Of course, to balance this, perhaps require 1 point in each elemental school.

Manic Mage- Each spell you casts requires a static 2AP, no matter what, but each skill casted is RANDOM. Like a wild mage from D&D. (Also, could use an effect increase to compensate for the added randomness)

Focused Mind- Choose a school, and choose two others. The first school gains a damage (or effect) increase of +30% and range increase of +10% (numbers of course are adjustible), the other two have their range and effect reduced by the same amount.

Control Freak- All CC skills deal an extra 10% damage to targets who still have the appropriate type of armor, but do -30% damage to enemies that are unarmored, and all other skills have -10% damage.

Quickdraw- Halve (or eliminate) the AP cost for switching weapons.

Nimble Hands- All tasks that would normally provoke attacks of opportunity no longer do. Moving out of an opponent's threat range still triggers an AoO. (Requires a certain rank in thievery)

The biggest problem I see with talents right now is definitely that they're either too situational or not interesting/powerful enough for a player to want them, at least compared to some others.

Definitely give some feedback on these, I love discussing potential additions to the game, and of course, these numbers are adjustable for balancing purposes.

I could probably see myself modding this game once it comes out fully.

Metamagic, Elemental Augmentor, Focused Mind would all require some special UI additions. That doesn't automatically rule them out, but it does break the "Talents are passives only" guideline.

Manic Mage should come with a warning "This will screw you over 99% of the time!" The focus of D:OS's combat is making smart tactical moves. Casting a random spell is not that. It's not one I would ever use.

Control Freak is way more downside than upside. 10% extra damage to a target who still has armor, and therefore will not take actual health damage, and 30% less damage to targets without armor? Each cast of a spell will bring you closer to being less effective. And that's before you add on the extra penalty of -10% damage for regular spells. I don't see any benefit for taking something which only serves to reduce your power.


Quickdraw - This one seems fine.

Nimble Hands - That's already in the game called "Duck Duck Goose" requiring Huntsman 1.

Does anyone have thoughts on my suggestions on the last page? I feel like my post got a bit buried under the ones after it.

Oh yeah, all the ones I suggested would require a UI addition to select the amount of AP you wish to add, of course.

Shadowrun Returns did a similar thing with the fetishes you summoned, you chose how much AP it'd have, the more AP you gave it, the higher a chance you would lose control of it, I doubt those additions would be too strenuous to add, and skills like those could add variety to the combat.

But I feel that people could make use of Manic Mage alongside the memory system. For example, you don't know exactly what offensive spell you will cast, but you've only prepared devastating offensive spells. The AP reduction could make that fireball cost less and do more, but will it be a fireball? That's the fun.

As for control freak, I figured it would be to specialize as a CC mage. You can't deal damage to a target well, but you can strip them of their protection. The numbers, obviously, need adjustment, but it adds spice.

As for Duck Duck Goose, I never saw it on the Talent List, actually. Mustn't have paid attention.

I totally agree, but a really good idea. I'll see more :

Irritating genius : +2 memory, +2 intelligence, - 3 strengh - 3 finess and ennemy have greater chance to focus you

This allow you to make a strategic powerfull mage but really weak if caugh, or make a tank but a little bit weak too. Sounds good ahah.

I read this whole topic, and to resume a bit, i chose to focus on existing talents and good ideas i found here. I didnt pick talents too powerfull, too complexe or over 5 to 10 in abilities


ABOUT REWORKS (already in game talents) :

- Kelsier, I think a lot of players agreed with you about reworks some talents (DEMON, ICY KING : I think add immutnity or a bit dmg (+5%) should be nice)
- About ESCAPIST, it is also not valuable. Someone suggest to add immunity to opportunist (duck duck..). I think its great.
- Nobody speaks about SLINGSHOT ? Somone use it ? I think its not valuable at all. Maybe add +30% dmg on grenade or + 1 finesse (or strengh) ?

ABOUT NEW (already suggested in this topic):

- I also read a lot of comments about a tanky talent/protect healer. I could suggest 3 things :
*Sentinel/Protector : 15% chance to protect any ally in 4m radius taking dmg instead of him but you take 125% initial dmg.
*Irritative genius : see my post just above. Idea reworks (p1). Open numerous play style.
*Stinky cloud (see below)
- Awarness or eagle-eye-like : +10 intiative
- Weapon master, Quickdraw (quote p2/3) : Switch weapon for 0 AP. Open various play style. Really nice. But could be overpowered if there is unlockable skill on the item. Ex : you are a warrior, begin fight with staff with teleport, bring an enemy in front of you, and you smash him with your 2 hand weapon. lol. But why not.
- The pure (quote p1) increasing heal but reducing dmg. Could be interesting.
- Imarikuri (see P3) : seductress and womanizer : interesting but a lot of work for Larian. Master crafter and Blacksmith's Romance. : Really good idea. Others are overpowered to me.

TOTALLY NEW :

- Ugly duck : You loose -10% all attributes but your allies in 20m radius gain +5% all attributes.
- Stinky cloud : like in DOS 1 (stench : decrease ennemy focus), but it was too OP. Then i suggest to add : reduce sight by -30% and -10% constitution for allies in 7m radius.

Just to speak about cooldown reduction or AP reduction cost : I think it is too overpowered if you have one or 2 crowd control charactere in your team.

Good job Larian.

Sentinel/Protector sounds more suited for a Skill Book rather than a Talent. Remember, Talents are passive abilities.

Stinkly cloud is way too debilitating for allies. I don't think we should make that idea happen.

Quick Reflexes / Awareness / whatever you want to call it, a Talent for +10 initiative - need more opinions on this. Is it OP? Underpowered? Should have additional perks or keep it simple?

Quickdraw sounds good, I'm all for that. Would open up really interesting hybrid playstyles.

Ugly Duck doesn't make sense to me. Besides you've already got Leadership perks to buff your allies.

Looking at the OP, Grounded looks like another candidate for the "buff this talent" category. Much like Ice King and Demon, it should probably have an additional side-effect. Perhaps Ice King ought to grant a buff to magical armour (instead of physical armour) and we'd relegate the physical armour buff to Grounded?

About Protector and sentinel, it is not a skill book to me, but a talent : 15% chance to block for a skillbook sound not valuable even if it cost 1 AP. And made a skill book with 100 chance is too op to me.

I think stinky cloud isnt too debilitating, but just make you thinking differently before going in figh/build your heros. I think its a talent I probably could take if it ll be in game.

A talent for intiative sounds good to me. if you want to make some strategic moves/actions before intiating fight.

For example, intiate fight with a mage with "stinky cloud" and "Awareness", you move away from your allies, avoiding debilitating abilities + positionning to figh effitiently, think its nice combo.
Moreover, a tank cant be overpower, because if you have one in your team with "sentinel", you need to be close (4m) to your mage too over protect him. In that case you got constitution reduction.
In this sens its work well because you can really crush your ennemies but you need to be strategic. If you go like a horse, choose other talents.

Ugly duck make sens to me for building a support for example. I think there is not enough talent to modify your way to play : today you play a magical hero : you take "far out man", "glass canon", "savage sortilege"... What about doing things differently ? Combine "Ugly duck" with "stinky cloud", and "the pure", you can stay back, healing / cursing soil / blessing your allies (not your enemies cuz of sight reduction). Combine "the pure " with "irritating genius" and "one man army" you get a tank healer. Combine "stinky cloud" and "speedcreeper", "guerilla" you get a sneeky assassin. Combine Leech, sentinel, and picture of health and you got a pure tank. "the pawn" and "awarness", "hothead", a great engage.

Anyway, its my way to think

Anyone else has any thoughts?

I love magic classes, so i will post some talents for them:

Chaos:
When you reach X points (6?) on any magic school you gain the power to penetrate magic armor with that school, hitting directily to HP, not even touching magic armour (CC will still be stopped by magic armor)

Wail of the Banshee: require High lvl and int.
The area of effect of your AOE spells(radius) incrise by 90% and their casting range decrase 80% (in case is not selfcast) but now they will deal just half of the total dmg to Magic Armor / Physical armor / HP at the same time, also their dmg will be applied to allies if they are in the AOE (even you) and all the AOE spells will now cost +1 (or 2) AP

Water Bounded: Hidrophist 5?
Reduce by 1( or 2) the memory slots to water spells, cant be 0.
In addittion, you gain a +1 (or +2) memory slot cost on all other elements.
(Optional: you also reduce by 1 the cost point on that element, and incrise by 1 on other elements (cant be 0), or maybe just the first one)

Same with all other elements ( earth/fire/air/death bounded)

Dance with the dead: Necromancy 10
When you died, you resurrect as a spirit ( like Ragequin DOS1 ) When you resurrect your spell reset their CD, you loose all your equipment atributes and you can only "fight" for 2 turns, after that you are banished.
(This mean that if your equip have lot memory, you will loose tons of spells, so u have to put first the ones you want to stay with, since with no equip ur melee /range dmg suck)

Dragonform: Phyro 10
You gain +50% fire DMG + 50% incrise area of your AOE spells + 50%range on spells + 50% Fire resist, your also get a HP and Armor/magical Bonus, but you now can DMG ur allies with spells (AOE) and there is a small chance when you use a spell to produce "Overpower" that cause you to explode dealing a heavy AOE DMG arround you, igniting the field and appling BURN 3 on everyone.

Moon Servant: Hidro 10
Healing effectivness incrise 50% and also will heal 10% of the total ammount of healing you do as magic armor when you use it, but will instantly form a "water surface" on the feet of the one you heal/target and you will always get the "wet" state when you cast and the 3 turns after (stack)
In adittion, you gain inmunity to "fall" on ice.

Nature Guardian: Geo 10
You gain Poison inmunity and incrise Physical Armor. You gain "Bounded to mothers nature" that will make you inmune to teleport and Knowckdown, But you will get +1 cost to movement in every turn and your magic armor will be converted into physical armor, although enemis will still first need to destroy your Physical armor to hit you with spells, CC will be unstopable.

Air Essence: Air 10
You dont need to waste any points on moving on combat and your evasion will go up to +30% on spells and +50% on melee atacks, but you will get a -80% "weight you can have" (bad english =x) and all the spells will cost +1 on memory slots.

Dark Arts: Necro 10
You get leech on every spell you use, healing for 10% of the DMG you deal.

Raise Undead: Necro 3-6-9
3: You can ressurect foes (scroll) to fight for you for 1 turn (you control them) they will get 50% less dmg and health. Max:1 foe
6: Same with 30% less dmg and health / 2 Turns / 1 Foe
9:Same with 30% less dmg and health / 3 Turns / 2 Foes

Hybrid: Need to have at least 3 Points on 3 different Schools
When you cast an spell of any of these 3 schools, you got a chance to "substract" 1AP of your next spell of any of the hybrid, can only occur 1 per turn (the cost can be 0, small chance)
In adittion you gain "Clarity" that allow you to "share" 1 "X" memory slot wihthin those classes, for example:
Hybrid Fire/Earth/Necro.
You have 4 memory slots.
1 fire spell cost 3 memory slots, then a Necro spell cost 2 memory slot, u can have both. The "shared X" would only be able for 2 spells, not 3 spells can share an X.
You also gain "Saturated" that will cause all other school that dont reach the "3" point require +1 to memory slot on any spell and +1on AP.

Knowlage:
Every 3 (or 2) Point wasted on any school of magic, you gain 1 memory slot.
Ex: if u have 6 on fire you got 2 memory // If you have 3 on fire and 3 on water you got 2 memory // if you have 6 on fire and 3 on water, you got 3 memory.

I like dark Arts a lot.

Interesting. With that, you sacrifice your ability to perform CC on enemies with magic armor, in exchange for more direct damage. I'm not sure if that would be balanced or not, but this is certainly an interesting idea.




So the radius of the spell is doubled, but the range at which you can cast it is halved. That might put the player inside the blast radius of their own spells much more often. I believe that spells already do friendly damage by default. It lets you hit more targets for less damage for more AP. Hmmm... not sure.





Interesting idea, but a single-focused school mage is already a bit dubious of a proposition since you just KNOW that sooner or later you'll be facing enemies immune to that element.




Maybe rename this "From Beyond the Grave"? So if I understand this right, if you die, you revive in ghost form for two turns to do a last-gasp attack and then you need a resurrection scroll? What if you get rezzed earlier? Is the spirit form immortal or can it die before the two turns are up?




As I said already, AoE spells damage friendly targets by default, putting that in as a downside is incorrect because it is in anyway. This also seems somewhat overpowered since as a Talent, it is permanently on.



I think one thing to be concerned about is overloading Talents with too many effects. Here, we have:

+ Healing Effectivenes +50%
+ Heals 10% of heal amount as Magic Armor
+ Immunity to slipping on Ice
- Forms water surface beneath feet of target
- Gain Wet status for 3 turns after casting.

That's a lot to fit into a tooltip. Additionally, is that status effect for 3 turns after EVERY skill or every magic spell or only after every water-school spell?




Another tooltip-killer. These are getting pretty complicated.




-80% weight capacity is pretty steep, and +1 Memory to all spells could possibly be crippling.




This one is simple, easy to understand, and builds on the benefit already provided by the Necromancy school. I like it.

more later

Hi! ty for the response, first of all i have to say that i really forgot that AOE spells hit allies since i was always was thinking in war AOE knockdown when i made the post, my bad.
Then i ll have to admit once i read them again that the 10 talents are a little bit insane, i just delirius there cose i want something GOOD for spending 10 points in a school and at the same time that those talents have a "weakness"
Thats why im going to redesign them to make them more suitable for DOS.

Dragonform:
Gain 10% more fire dmg and the ablity to applie BURN on enemy through the magic armor (although he burning ticks will consume magic armor till its down) . Also Gain 20% water and fire resist.

Moon Servant:
Gain 5% more healing effectivness for 2 turns each time you cast a healing spell, stacks up to 5 times. Also gain 20% more magic armor

Earth Guardian:
You gain inmunity to knockdown and teleportation. Also gain 20% more physical armor

Air Essence:
You gain 1 free point for movement (stack with the other one) Also gain 20% more air ressit and 20% more evasion

My idea, although it wasnt clear the first post is giving each school (except from necro) a "Path" being fire the Magic Dmg, Water the Support, Earth the tank and Air the Phys Dmg.

From Beyond the Gave:
Once you died, your spirit comes into battle for 2 turns,having half your HP and DMG. if you got resurrected when your spirit is up you will get "Soul decay" for 10 turns, not letting use this talent for that duration.

On the other hand we got the "Bouned elements" And yes it might appear some 100%element resist but thats part of the idea, risking going on a full element build (maybe having some other spell elements just in case, despite the contras) its not only to dmg them, you can also:Heal, Create surface as oil or smoke r fog, ice, etc.

You could probably merge some of these together. Like, there's an Earth Resistance Talent in the OP. Merge that with Earth Guardian, so the talent gives you the +% to Earth Resistance and increased physical armor. That's one of the ideas I was peddling in my posts. Immunities seem too much for a talent that powerful.

The schools already have a path Gord. Air deals damage to magic armor and stuns, water heals and buffs magic armor, fire deals direct damage and buffs your stats, earth debuffs enemies and buffs you.

Shouldn't Dragonform have a debuff to water resistance rather than a buff? Also wouldn't that be insanely overpowered with earth spells (poison dart?) due to the way elemental surfaces work right now?

I actually think that the inmunities are really good but at the same time they are not unbalanced since you need to waste lot of skillspoints on it and knockdown its a way off CC through phyisical armor, you can still CC him a lot and dmg it with magic and magic CC. I would reconsider the telep inmunity, and i forgot to put the earth resist there.

With the "School path" i was meaning that you can do a "full hybrid" with 2 schools, for example doing a rouge trying to reach the 10 air, so he can move more or a tank with earth to get more armor and inmunity and both at the same time have lot of spells to use.

I said this cose in DOS (at least for my gameplays) i never had a "solid" char, since all of them combine almost all the schools, having mage, tanks, ranger and rogues with adrenaline, teleport, stuns, charm, slow(less ap) and lot more cc and buff (like haste of rogue, really op), and i know that larian dont want to "put an only path to the chars" but i think this is why at least for me the game turns so easy, cose you can make all hybrid chars combining all the 1st school buffs and pros, making a really difference between you and the mobs.
Here they put memory slots, its a huge pro to stop this full hybrid builds (since now you dont have to reach the stat to get 100% chance, you have to also have the memory slot to use it) but i want to see the final version to ensure that.

Ok here is one that might be a LITTLE overpowered... but I'll try.

-Mugger (Req: Pickpocket of 3 likely): When speaking to someone you get the option to steal from them in a conversation without anyone seeing. It is less efficient but is a safer way to steal key items.
-Speed Drinker: Unlocks an ability that gives you a free action to quaff a potion (Whether it be healing or resistance).
--Alternatively this could not work with healing potions
-Bottletoss (Scoundrel): Allows you to throw potions in battle as if they were grenades.
--Alternatively this could work only with negative potions and poisons.
-Social Grace (Persuasion): Once per conversation you can recover from a failed persuasion roll, allowing you to try again.
--Alternatively: Failed persuasion gives a grace period to escape before combat occurs, allowing one to escape.

really like mugger, but i would put a "penalty" to steal less than normal way, so you could use it just for that (or maybe let the first item you steal, make it 100% posible to be stolen, but then you cant steal anymore from that npc)
speed drinker i love it! both ones, maybe if let you drink heal just recover half of the flask. ( this will be for battle or turn? i mean the free ap)

Mugger has a penalty written right in there. It is less efficient, you can steal a lot more pickpocketing the normal way.

Mugging's main purpose is it relies less on not being seen and getting behind a person.

Mugger sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to add in a conversation option to each person. If there was a mass "add to all" option, that would cause problems too such as mugging Alexandar at the end. Additionally, it sounds like "give me your stuff or I'll attack you" sounds like that should probably not work on everyone. If you try to mug a guard or someone tough or someone higher level, they should just kick your ass - realistically speaking.

Speed Drinker sounds good.

Ok time to get more risque. Time for Racial Talents!

First are Racial Skill Enhancers.

Human
-Grand General (Leadership: #): Encourage is enhanced further, giving it a +2 to all stats and giving leadership a further reach (and applying it to yourself). However Encourage now takes 2ap and 5-turn recovery.
--Alternatively. Humans gain the ability to double the range of leadership and make Encourage affect all allies regardless of range.

Lizardman
-Dragon (Pyromancy): Firebreath now boosts off of Intelligence, and becomes a far longer reaching cone with better damage output.
-Dragoon (Warfare): Firebreath now boosts off of strength. In addition to dealing damage, it also provides a fire damage bonus to all physical attacks for a period of time.

Elves already have it too good.

Next are Build Changers. These swap around racial traits and give an additional bonus.

Elf
-Druid (Must take upon creation): Elves lose one dex, and gain 1 intelligence. They gain the skill "Spellshot" which forces an Elf's next attack to be magical instead.

Lizardman
-Brute (Must take upon creation): Lizardmen loses 1 intelligence and gains 1 strength. The Lizardman gains "Phantasm" a skill that makes the next attack be physical instead.

Apparently the latest patch actually nerfed Guerrilla from +50% damage to +25%, thus making it literally useless. It obviously needs heavy changing. So here's my idea.


Guerrilla
Sneak AP cost increased to 2, but Guerrilla gives a +25% damage bonus to normal attacks made when sneaking AND normal attacks do not break sneak. Skills, grenades, special arrows all break Sneaking and do not get the bonus. Backstabs and other criticals on normal attacks do get the bonus.

Add in improved AI so enemies hit by sneak attacks will look around for the attacker when their turn comes up and I think this will work.

The nerf to Guerilla was harsh enough that it is no longer worth taking. I felt it was in a good place before.

Monster Slayer: Bonus 20 + *player level* percent to monster. Reduce the same amount of damage to human and beast.

Outlaw: Bonus 20 + *player level* percent to human and beasts. Reduce the same amount of damage to human and beast.

Zoolander : allow players to have a wild animal as pet. For fun only. Come with Wild Lover skill.

Soul Eater: Killing human will give you souls. You traded your own soul to become a short-lived king. Give player 0.5% damage per soul, increase your damage taken by the same amount. You can no longer be healed by dark art (necromancy), halved normal healing on you. Permanent.

Reaper For every kill, you have 50% chance to reap half of the health the next enemy on your list. Pure damage, direct to health. Your accuracy reduced the more you kill.

Winter's Servant Become the loyal servant of Winter. Every fourth turn, you can active Cold Wind skill.
Cold Wind : Freeze enemies on *meters* in 2 turns, straight line. Any Ice source damage is reduced by 10%. Damage is effected by intelligent, can be blocked by magic amour. Freeze effect ignore magic amour.

Sunray become the embodiment of the sun.

I'd like to spark some more discussion. The game still needs an expanded Talent selection. And only two of the seven magic schools even have any Talents (and those two are unimpressive and cancel themselves out.) I'll try and think through some more ideas, but I don't have any in a state to post yet.


Extended Shape - Requires: Polymorpher 5
The duration of all your personal transformations is increased by 1-2 turns.

The idea behind this one is that it allows all transformations to your own body to last another turn. Or maybe two. It depends if two turns extra would be too powerful. But for a Talent point, I think 1 turn would be fine without needing a disqualifying penalty attached.


Some existing Talents need work as well.

Escapist - Requires Scoundrel 1 or Huntsman 1.
You can escape from combat even if enemies are right next to you, and prevents enemies from making attacks of opportunity on you.

This combines the Escapist and Duck Duck Goose Talents into one Talent. While Duck Duck Goose is good, Escapist really isn't all that worthwhile to take alone. I also want to let this be useful with a point in Scoundrel, not just Huntsman, because Rogues are more likely to be the ones needing to deal with Attack of Opportunity.



Guerrilla - (Optional?) Requires Scoundrel 2 or Huntsman 2
Increases damage done while sneaking by 25%. You can now sneak at full movement speed. Basic Attacks done from Sneak now have a 20-33% chance to not break Stealth.

Guerrilla was just plain bad. The nerf from +50% down to +25% damage boost meant it was so situationally useful that it was near useless. It was only really good with Mortal Blow and Snipe, but only because those skills already had a high bonus when sneaking in the first place. It could also be useful sneaking at the end of your turn if no other enemy moves in a way to see you, but I find that questionable as well.

But fine. If Larian wants to keep that at +25%, other buffs can be done. The most obvious one is to combine it with the old Speedcreeper Talent, to let you Sneak without any movement penalty. That synergies nicely with Guerrilla. I still think that's not quite enough to make it great, though.

So the other buff I propose is to give a chance for normal attacks (NOT skills) to not break Sneak when used. I'm guessing that people will think that's too much, though.

Optionally, this Talent could require 2 points into Huntsman or Scoundrel. Not sure if that's necessary or not.


Zombie
Poison heals you instead of damaging you, regular healing potions and spells will damage you, with the exception of healing from Necromancy or consuming flesh. Your body is less sensitive to pain. Permanently gain extra vitality -OR- Physical armor to the amount of 1% of your maximum health per level.

Zombie was ridiculously awful and not worth taking at all. The buffs are to allow for additional healing options, from Necromancy's vitality leech ability and flesh eating. Although one problem with the flesh eating is that I'm not sure how to handle the memories and skills which elves can get. Maybe non-elf zombies simply can't eat memory or skill body parts, only generic body parts?

I also added some physical armor because zombies feel less pain. Or I could have changed that to extra vitality instead. That would also work

Most people say the biggest problem with zombies is that they catch on fire too easily, but I didn't want to touch that weakness. But if Zombies got extra vitality, that would help with the fire damage.

Extended Shape is neat, nice and simple but still fun. I think 1 turn addition is plenty.

I personally think escapist is gamebreaking if you're willing to abuse it. It means if you're not incapacitated and have enough armor and health to avoid surprise deaths in a turn, you're essentially unkillable.

Guerilla and Speedcreeper being combined would be fine in my book though. Zombie talent allowing healing from necromancer would already be a big step forward. As I said in the other thread, what is most needed is a set of skills to support zombie characters.

Here's another suggestion for a skill to help zombies: The Cycle of Life (hydrosophist probably, maybe geomancer): Removes Decaying Touch and heals the character if it does so. When cast on a zombie, it prevents them from being damaged by healing spells for 2 turns (perhaps even allowing like 20-25% healing through). This would let you safely use AOE healing spells for a couple turns, or protect your zombie from some judicious enemy priests, or even eat some non-poisoned food or what have you.

Talent idea for Polymorph: For each transformation you have active, gain a 5% move speed and damage boost, or something along those lines. Or regenerate 2-4% max health per turn for each transformation active.

I've been thinking about some Talents suitable for mid-level mages.

I've mentioned the ones for Fire and Air already in this thread, but here they are again for the sake of completeness.

Convection - Requires: Pyrokinetic 5.
If Warm or Burning at the start of your turn, active skill cooldowns are reduced by 1 turn to a minimum of 0. If Wet, Chilled, or Frozen at the start of your turn, active skill cooldowns are increased by 1 turn.

So if after you previous turn ended, you had 3 skills on cooldown, one with 5 turns, one with 3 turns, and one with 2 turns, and you got set on fire before your next turn came back up, the cooldowns would do the usual tick down, so 4, 2, 1 turns left, then Convection would kick in and they would go to 3, 1, 0 turns. You could use that 0 turn cooldown right away.


Fully Charged - Requires: Aerothurge 5.

Absorb electricity from surfaces and clouds - taking air-type damage (bypassing magical armor) instead of being stunned - to gain 1 AP.

Absorbing a surface in this way will do a flat 25% of your maximum health in air damage, bypassing magic armor to directly hit your health, but that 25% amount is then reduced by whatever your air resistance is.


Rock Solid - Requires: Geomancer 5.
Immune to Knockdown and Oiled* status effects. +25% to all Physical Armor. Movement decreased by 20%.

When you are sturdy as a rock, you stand tall and cannot be knocked down anymore. You are also a master of Earth and do not suffer the negative effects of walking through oil surfaces. However, it comes at the cost of decreased movement per AP.

*Oiled is a status I'm proposing which is like Slowed. It has infinite duration while standing on oil, but wears off as soon as you leave the oil surface (but you do not get the lost AP back).


Water Cycle - Requires Hydrosophist 5
When wet or standing on water or ice, healing spells are 33% stronger and use one fewer AP to cast (minimum of 0). When warm or burning healing spells are 20% weaker and require one additional AP to cast.

Maybe this is too similar to Elemental Affinity. I was trying to think of a bonus which wasn't just a copy of other bonuses. I'll think more on this.

Not happy with the name of this one.


Blood Pact - Requires Necromancy 5
When standing in a blood surface and health is below 30%, Necromancy spells are 50% stronger.


Harvester of Souls - Requires Necromancy 5

Killing an enemy grants you +1 * enemy level to all attributes for three turns.

Credit for the concept goes to LordOfBones, although he said +X to your highest attribute. I tweaked the idea to scale better as level increases. It does not stack with itself (that could get out of control).



Still working on a Summoner one, all I've got for that so far is "When three or more of your summons are on the field, " and that's it.


***

I'd also like to re-promote my earlier ideas from this thread for Physical Talents, but modified slightly. EDIT: Modified more based on feedback.


Berserker - Requires: Warfare 3
As your health decreases, your damage increases.

Basically, your damage increases the closer you are to death. This idea is stolen from the Kickstarter campaign's "Juggernaut" skill set idea.

It could work something like this:

0-10% = 2.00x damage. 11-30% = 1.67x damage, 31-49% = 1.33x damage, 50%+ = 1.00 damage. Basically, if you’re under 50% health, the more dead you are, the more damage you can deal. This has its own inherent risk-reward because of course you’re almost dead.

This should affect all damage types, including magic (initial hits, not DoT) not just melee, to make this useful for hybrids as well. Maybe it should be Incompatible with Blood Pact.


Counter Strike - Requires: Scoundrel 3

Dodging an enemy melee attack gives you a 33% 100% chance to automatically retaliate with a Basic Attack.

This only works if you have a melee weapon equipped of course. This could be “fun” to give to some enemies as well! The counter can be blocked or dodged (Counter-counter-counter-counter...).


Shield Bash – Requires: Warfare 3 and equipped shield.
Blocking an enemy melee attack gives you a 33% 100% chance to automatically retaliate with a bash.

This deals 25-50 100% of your weapon damage as crushing damage. The bash can be blocked or dodged.


Slow and Steady - Requires: Warfare 3. Incompatible with The Pawn

Decrease movement by 2.5 meters per AP, but boost Physical and Magical armor by 50%.

The idea for this one is to allow for a more defense-focused warrior by boosting their magical armor, but decreasing how far they can move and not giving them the free movement from Pawn. The decrease amounts to 10.0 fewer meters per 4 AP.


Zeroed In - Requires: Huntsman 5.

Increase your damage by 10% per consecutive Basic Attack attack on the same enemy. Caps at +30%.

The bonus carries over to next turns (Maybe a "Zeroed In" status icon). Saving AP or moving normally does not reset the bonus, but switching targets, fleeing the battle, using ANY skill (including racial and movement skills), special arrow, or grenade instantly cancels the bonus back to 0 before the attack goes off (no bonus damage for those actions). (Killing the target also resets the bonus back to 0, but after the kill.)

I didn't notice this thread before posting my thread lol ah well ill reformat it in here

One handed mastery - Requiremnts: One-handed 1
When wielding a one-handed weapon without a sheild gain 25% damage and 10% movespeed

Jack of all trades - none
Enables you to switch weapon slots once per turn without AP cost

Power overwhelming - necromancer 1
Doubles damage on your first turn but your character dies the next turn

Famous thief - scoundrel 1
Gain 2 theivery points but lose the ability to trade with all character and characters instantly attack if they see you using sneak or invis

Sharpened weapons - none
Consume 1 repair hammer to apply permanent 5% accuracy on a weapon does not stack on one weapon but stacks with dual-wielding

centurion (credit to epic encounters) - warfare 1
This triggers when 1 of 2 things happens
1. You trigger an enemy's attack of oppurtunity and it misses you or is blocked you attack back with no ap lost
2. You block a hit and the enemy is within melee ranger

Um... these are literally the worst Talents ever proposed in the history of the game, (and I don't care if that hurts your feelings). Do you know why? Because TALENTS are not SKILLS. Talents are PASSIVE. They are ALWAYS ON and cannot be turned off.

So for the entire rest of the game, every single time a Necromancer is in combat, they will do double damage... at a time when enemies are guaranteed to have maximum armor, and then they will die. Awful. It would be shitty as a skill, too.

The thief one is garbage because it's two really easily acquirable thievery points in exchange for the massive, massive crippling of being unable to trade with ANYONE, AND having to reload any time you get caught sneaking or turning invisible. Worthless because of the gigantic downside and tiny upside.

hm yeah i am a bit antsy with the downsides to some of my ideas ill admit that.

Power overwhelming was meant to combo with rage warrior though forcing them to put a point into necro. The strat with it was run warlord + morning person and power overwhelming and keep reviving them as they shred through enemies.

Famous thief i thought would still be too good even with the loss of trading since i play alot of the game in single-player i use barter machines to trade (characters with 5+ barter). The detection would be a bit annoying ill admit that so ill rework it.

Power overwhelming - warfare 1
Doubles damage on your first 2 turns but your character dies the next turn

Famous thief - scoundrel 1
Gain 3 theivery points but set attitude of character down to -30 when trading with this character

Well my big problem with the Guerrilla Talent is that it seems meant to only combo with 1-2 skills, and that just seems like too narrow an application. So a Talent aimed specifically at that one build also seems far too narrow.

Well another big thing I see with Famous Thief is that even ignoring the downsides, the upside is hella weak. As in you can replace your initial version with All Skilled Up plus one +Thievery item you can buy at a store (or even two +Thievery items and save the Talent point).


The reworked versions still blow chunks.

No one has any reason to pick a Talent which can instantly kill their character on the third turn, forcing one or two other people to waste their turns reviving the worthless corpse and then blowing their precious, cooldown-limited healing (or limited potion supply) on the "bad life choice" guy. That's just a waste of time and energy.

Famous Thief can still be replicated with +Thievery items (possibly in combination with All Skilled Up), or patience.

Thievery level 1 allows you to steal things up to a total value of 120 gold or 0.5 kg in weight. Thievery level 2 allows you to steal things up to a total value of 140 gold or 1.0 kg in weight.

If the progression is linear, that means...

Thievery level 3 allows you to steal things up to a total value of 160 gold or 1.5 kg in weight.
Thievery level 4 allows you to steal things up to a total value of 180 gold or 2.0 kg in weight.
Thievery level 5 allows you to steal things up to a total value of 200 gold or 2.5 kg in weight.

Is the progression linear? I don't know. But if it is, that's an extra 60 gold and an extra 1.5 kg.

So power overwhelming is a no-go in general but i want a talent like famous thief to work.
My next suggestion is it makes you able to pickpocket without sneaking or invis and the npc sight cones are indentical to your sneak levels.

Famous Thief
+2 Thievery & +2 Sneaking and either -2 Bartering or -40 Attitude?


Instead of Power Overwhelming perhaps a new kind of Glass cannon:
Deal double damage, receive double damage

Hmmm... still brainstorming Summoner Rank 5 Talent.


Teamwork Solo Act - Requires: Summoner Rank 5
When 3 summons are on the field at the same time, the summons gain +30 to Initiative.

The idea for that is the summons get a massive boost to initiative, letting them go before enemies. The summoner does not directly get a benefit.


Safety in Numbers - Requires: Summoner Rank 5
While 3 summons are on the field at the same time, the summons and summoner gain Leadership +3

The idea for this one is that the Summons can act as focuses for Leadership, helping the entire party.

A lot of these are REALLY powerful, almost too powerful (and leadership is already borderline brokenly good... and useless at the same time)

+30 to initiative I believe even just flat out allows them to go first.

Though in all fairness the only summon that you can have more than one of... is the totems.

As always these are preliminary ideas brainstormed up, and are subject to tweaking. The ones proposed do require an investment of 5 points into Summoning (before bonuses) and only apply if you have 3 summons on the field. I also was thinking that only one of them would become a Talent, not both (no stacking those bonuses).


Leadership I believe is considered useless because of the short 5m range, meaning that party members are often not in range. If some summons had it, the chances of a party member being in range would be higher.


Allowing the totems to go first is specifically the point, since they have low health and can be one-shot by enemies. The +Initiative does not apply to the actual Summoner.


I considered thinking of other bonuses which could be passively added to the summons/summoners under the "three active summons", such as +Fortified, or +Restoration, or +Damage, but those also seemed powerful. I can try to think of some more.

I'm with you there but i managed to make a totem army at one point.I did this by creating either a water or oil surface and used bless and the enemy slowly got overwhelmed by this.

This is an excellent observation. The combination of blessed surface healing with totems can become overwhelming.

I really like the idea for Safety in Numbers in particular. I'd also like to see totems give a passive elemental resistance aura.

I don't have strong opinions about my Summoner Talent ideas, I just think that each skill school should have at least one better-than-mediocre Talent. If I can stimulate discussion and get people thinking about Talents, maybe they'll think up some good ideas.

And hopefully LARIAN is PAYing ATTENTION to the Talent situation and has a bunch of ideas they're working on.

Good work on the talent ideas. It's good to see that my ideas on the various elemental talents, like Rock Solid, lived on through yours. I wonder if Larian has an opinion on these.

As I've said before, I really like the elemental talent ideas. Grounded, Ice King, Demon etc. are all way too bare-bones and need the buffs, even if they're not exactly the buffs we're advocating here.

I like your end-game Talent suggestions. They're something to look forward to - something to add that extra oomph to your character when you've bought the most expensive gear and learned the best skills.

Don't worry I know I was being ENTIRELY unfair tearing your idea apart without offering one of my own or a way to fix it.

But I couldn't come up with one that didn't fall into "So useful why wouldn't you get it?" and "Why bother?" with a bit of "Shouldn't that be a skill and not a talent?"

The only one I thought of was a talent where your active summon receives 10% of all your healing (whether it be HP, armor, or magic armor)

Synchronized - Requires: Summoner Rank 5
Increase damage by 10% for every summon. (Does not affect summons themselves)

You can't summon and use attack skills or autoattacks at the same time, so it should leverage it out as long only personal summons get counted. At least my guess.

I'm going to steal the name Synchronized, Kalrakh, and Stabbey's Leadership Summon idea for this concept:

Synchronized: Summons affected by auras projected by the summoner also project that aura themselves.

So, say, you could use the summons as proxies to increase the area that your leadership or Favourable Wind aura covers. Need more positive auras to make this more useful, but even just using it with leadership (assuming a slight range buff) could be very good

Another, more extreme idea:

One Mind, One Body: The summoner and their incarnate share all statuses, negative and positive.

Hasting your summon would haste the summoner, but you'd also share poisoning or knockdown or the like. Probably Armor on one would still block the status from the other, but possibly negative statuses would effect both no matter what. Hard to say whether this would be amazing or terrible. I'm leaning towards thinking using your summon intelligently with a buff-heavy party member could make this stupid good.

Glass cannon + memonic summoner with that talent yum yum

The problem with your synchronized: The idea is nice, but it would be only usefull if you any kind of such a buff in use. Would be something in the way need leadership and summoner to unlock.


Not sure about what you mean with the second one:
If your summon has no armor and gets knockdown, would you get knocked down too or would your armor prevent the summon to get knocked down?

Plenty of talents are semi-situational. Again, more positive aura buffs are needed to make truly a useful talent, but yes, with current skills you'd basically need leadership to make it worthwhile. Perhaps it could even require both leadership and summoning to unlock.

I dunno about the second one either. Probably the negative statuses would not bypass armor, but it might need to bypass armor to be balanced. Probably a crap concept if it requires breaking the armor rules though. Could work better as a skill, too.

These are just some suggestions for each tallent:

BERSERKER:
I feel that once you get below 25% health it won't take much more than 1 hit to kill you off, so depending on where you fall (which percentage so below 10 or between 16-20) sort of becomes pure luck. I think once you hit a certain percentage like 15% or 10% you damage is simply doubled OR
once you get below 50% you do 125% damage, 25% health = 150% damage and 10% = 200% damage
Something slightly more manageable that a tiny difference of 5%.

COUNTER STRIKE:
Tbh it's rare enough to dodge in the first place but then to only have a 25% chance to counter attack, let me tell you that's never gonna happen... Maybe this should also increase your dodging % or make the counter attack a 75%.

Also I didn't know you could block attacks with your shield, I thought it just increased your physical and magical armour.

I haven't read any of the comments (too many of them) so I have no idea if you've added any ideas or not. Hope this helps tho.

Very good points. So what if Berserker did 2.0x damage at 10% or under, 1.67x 11-30% health, and 1.33x damage 31-49% health? That makes falling in a particular range less important.

Shield Bash and Counter Strike could have a 100% chance to go off, since dodging and blocking is so low, and Shield Bash can do 100% of weapon damage.

All numbers are subject to further tweaking of course.

Do i remember correctly that traits were removed in the new game?

If that is so and nobody mentioned before then all those effects that traits were giving could become talents.
Most of them were very useful additions to skills and abilities.

i liked that system a lot, btw.

Yeah but alot of the traits led to one class i.e. heartless or compassionate was crit chance vs backstab chance to hit OR one was obviously better than the other immunity to fear vs 1 in loremaster. I honestly like them being gone it removes some of the structure behind story choices.

Wow... how did I not notice that Bigger and Better is still +1 Attribute point in a game where not only do you get 4 times the amount of attribute points per level, BUT starting attribute values have also been doubled? Bigger and Better is undeniably garbage now because it is unchanged.

It as well as All Skilled Up, for some reason, have a "Requires Level 2" restriction, which seems odd since it's literally impossible to take them before level FOUR.


Bigger and Better - Required: Level 2 4
Increase all your Attributes by 1 point.

There. That's an improvement, it boosts all primary attributes by 1, and all secondary (utility) attributes by 1 as well. Or how about this:


Bigger and Better - Required: Level 2 4
Gain 4 Attribute points.

Also better. I'm sure other people could have other suggestions.


Walk It Off in D:OS EE was changed from D:OS 1 classic to "Statuses with a bodybuilding saving throw have one fewer turn duration". That was an improvement, but for some reason, when Walk It Off was moved over, it was reverted back to the lousy Classic version. This is an easy fix:

Walk It Off
Statuses which are saved by Physical Armor have one fewer turns duration.

Maybe Kalrakh is right. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Most of this statuses only are for one turn, and I don't thnk Walk it Off does reduce below 1.

Goading presence: When enemies are within 8m of you at then end of their turn they will attack you on their next turn

Heavy strike: Increase AP cost of attack by 1 but gain 30% damage

Two's a team:When fighting with only two character gain a 25% health bonus or 25% damage bonus

Ambushers: When you or one of your allies gets the first strike gain 5 initiative

Pain is power: Take 25% extra damage but gain 2% extra damage per 5% of vitality lost

Does attacking from outside of combat count for first strike? Probably a bit to easy to achieve. xD

Pain is power sound pretty useless. You would need to lose 50% vitality and still would not deal as much extra damage as you receive. Also they first need to shred your armors, wich would be easier for them, while giving you nothing in return.

Hm i thought about increasing the numbers with pain is power but im scared since its viability depends on what a rush and comeback kid aswell.

That sounds more like it belongs as an activated Taunt skill than an always-on Talent. If all enemies within 8m are targeting you constantly, you'll probably get sick of dying.



Attacks cost 2 AP. Increasing the AP cost by 50% for a damage increase of 30% is inefficient. It should be +50% damage.




I'll run the numbers on that. You need to be under 35% health before your damage output is +25% to match the 25% extra damage you're taking. That's a bad place to be, it's basically one-shot range. So you're going to get off maybe one hit at +25% damage before dying.

That does not look like a worthwhile trade. You seem to really like Talents which are designed to kill you.

Yeah... i changed heavy strike to 30% my original idea was 50%.

I'll admit my favorite characters next to rogues are berserker type warriors whom trade health for damage so yeah i come up with trade-off talents. For that skill I was thinking about making something extreme where it reduces the damage you take as vitality increases but that would too powerful so i dumped it.

To iterate my original idea it was something like
After your one/both of your armor's are broken reduce incoming damage by 4% per 5% vit and gain 2% damage.

I do like the idea of turning damage you've taken into extra power. Maybe it should be a necromantic skill - do 50% damage to yourself, but give yourself 50% extra damage plus some physical armor (let's say 0.10*lost HP for a start) because you basically bulk up? In my mind the reference point is a kind of power where you literally turn the damage you've taken into physical power, bulking you up as a result. I don't think it should be a Talent though, it sounds better as a skill.

I was thinking "gee, the game creates too many surfaces which are huge and obnoxious", and came up with this idea:

Surgical Spellcaster -
Decrease the radius of all AoE's and surfaces created by your spells by 75%, but increase their potency by 75%. Surfaces which would be smaller than 0.5m in radius are rounded down to 0 m (no surface created)

EDIT: Decrease the radius of all AoE's and surfaces created by your spells by 75%, but increase the potency of all AoE/surface creation spells by 75%. Surfaces which would be smaller than 0.5m in radius are rounded down to 0 m (no surface created)


The idea behind this Talent is to drastically increase the power of your spells, but shrink their effect to make them basically single-target spells. You won't be making any AoEs or spreading surfaces with a radius this small.

Thoughts? Too powerful? Should the power increase only apply to spells which are AoE or create surfaces? That's probably best, actually. Okay, idea revised.

Regardin the fact, that surfaces themselves deal hardly any damage, except if you can blow them up, I would say 75% damage increase would be far to much. Also each skill would need and estimate for created surface in their description? Also most surfaces don't deal damage at all: ice/water/blood. And how would it work for air? Air itself does not create surfaces, but it affects 'surfaces' if they are water, blood or steam.

What if the added damage bonus actually "used up" an existing surface, kind of like how blood sucker heals you based on the amount of blood and eliminates the surface, this talent would make it so that surface skills also "absorb" some existing surfaces to contribute to that damage bonus, which as Kalrath said, shouldn't be so high.

Usually I'm a bit shy suggesting skills and talents, since I find it so difficult to balance these things on paper without knowing so many other factors like enemy AI, health, armor, etc, but here are a few things I've been thinking:

There should be a Purist talent for each school. The requirement is that you can only have points into ONE school. As it stands, hybrid builds (especially with all this memory) are extremely easy to pull off and seem to have no drawbacks. Maybe that's okay, I'm actually a huge fan of this kind of flexibility, but I also think it would be really interesting to give people some real incentive to become a Purist.

What do you guys think of this and what should the talent actually DO? How punitive is drawback of being restricted to one school and what is the best way to balance this? I'm thinking there should be a Purist flavor for each class, but for programming purposes, it might be easier to have one Purist talent that applies buffs to the attributes the school already modifies. For example, at lvl 5 Hydro, Putting a talent point into Purist gives 15% more healing and 15% more magic armor. Something like that.

____

The second idea has to do with Pain Reflection. I really like the idea of also reflecting CC (which of course would only be effective if the enemy has 0 armor of whatever type). Maybe at lvl 5 Pain Reflection you could have the option of becoming an Elemental Mirror (better names are welcome).
_____

Along these lines, I think it would be interesting to have some skills or talents that change incoming physical damage to magic or vice versa. Maybe something like:

Internal Balance: 50% of physical damage received is converted to magic damage and 50% of magic damage received is converted to physical damage.

or maybe something more interesting...I'd love to hear more ideas.

Internal Balance is interesting, potentially very good on a tank. CC reflection sounds way too good, more like a skill, but perhaps has some limitation (not sure if just making it a 20-25% chance to proc would make it acceptable as a talent).

I like the concept of purist, though maybe it should only affect mages, which are almost required to take multiple trees. Warfare/Rogue/Rangers on the other hand are very self-sufficient and it's not all that much of a sacrifice to stay pure with them. I think these should be powerful, unique effects that expand your gameplay rather than being some number increase, since you're limiting your options a great deal.

Purist Ideas:

Pyro Purist: X% chance your applications of burning will pierce magic armor. Each enemy you have burning boosts your run speed by 5%, granting +1 AP if 5+ enemies are burning. (A bit much for a talent, prolly, but is fun)

Hydro: The more you heal and boost magic armor, the more water damage you deal (up to 30-40% increase maybe)

Geomancer: Earth damage leeches some physical armor and gives it to you, and poison leeches some magical armor

Aerothurge: Immunity to stun and electrified surfaces heal your magic armor and you get a 25-35% run speed boost while on these surfaces

Polymorph: Each transformation lasts 1 extra turn (Stabbey I think suggested this earlier, but its more reasonable in the context of a pure polymorpher)

Numbers can be tweaked, maybe a 40% damage boost? (25% would be too low.)

As for Air, hmmm... well since air does not CREATE surfaces, then naturally Air is neither affected by the penalty nor gains anything from the bonus.

We have a release date for the game now. Between 5 and 7 of the skill schools are magic oriented. 7 out of 10 total skill schools are magic oriented.

Here is the total list of Talents intended for magic-users:


Demon - Mediocre, because game balance dictates that there should be a reasonably even distribution of magic damage types, so the amount of damage you save from one source is basically countered by the amount of damage you receive from its opposing source.

Elemental Affinity - Better than it used to be because armor means you can stand in surfaces with less risk, but even so, you still don't want to stand in most surfaces much.

Far Out Man - Good Talent. An extra 2m range is quite helpful.

Ice King - Mediocre. See Demon.

Mnemnonic - Okay, since mages are more likely to need as much memory as possible. This is more of a generalist since mage-specific, though.

Pet Pal - Because all the other classes reserve their Talent points for better Talents. Mages don't have much to pick from, so they'll be the ones taking this most of the time.

Savage Sortilege - I honestly can't get a handle on how well this is because the base critical chance is so low as it is. Cutting it in half? This is something which is only good much later once you have a lot of critical chance, and that's IF you get critical chance at all.


So that's seven mage-specific Talents, using a charitable definition of "mage-specific", and of those 7, two are a wash in terms of use, and two more are mediocre.

***

And I haven't even talked about how Bigger and Better is literally garbage which was carried over with ZERO THOUGHT from D:OS 1. 1 attribute point for one Talent point? In a game where you get 10 attribute points to start and 2 per level instead of 0.5 per level.

Come on, Larian, wake up. The clock is ticking.

Demon and Ice King are basically like taking no Talents at all, the effects balance each other out. A criticism of these Talents has been one of the most central messages of this thread and other such threads for many months now. If anything gets changed about Talents, *these ought to*.

They did change comeback kid percentage to 20% XD but yeah its an improvements on DOS EE/classic talents but at the same time alot of talents got removed thanks to the change in mechanics and it feels alot more limited because of that.

Guerrilla - (Optional?) Requires Scoundrel 2
Increases damage done with Basic Attacks while sneaking or invisible by 50%. You can now sneak at full movement speed.

Another idea I had for tweaking Guerrilla. In addition to letting you Sneak at full speed, the old bonus of +50% damage while sneaking has been restored, but ONLY for basic attacks, not skills. That means Guerrilla will have no effect on the damage of Mortal Blow or Snipe.

EDIT: Good suggestion from gGeo.

Guerrilla - (Optional?) Requires Scoundrel 2
Increases damage done with Basic Attacks while sneaking or invisible by 50%. You can now sneak at full movement speed.

Oh right. Good idea.

While I'm here, I'll throw in a suggestion for the Undead Racial Talent:

Resilient Body
Gain 5 Physical armor per level.


It's not a large amount, but it adds up. At level 30 that's an extra 150 armor. Numbers can be adjusted as needed, but that seems like an okay starting point for theorycrafting. If 5 is too small, I think it could go as high as 8 armor per level.


Lore-wise it makes sense since Undead don't have all them functioning vital organs which living folks need. Maybe even toss in "Immune to Bleeding" and possibly "Immune to Poison" as well.

I like your idea for the undead racial, that actually sounds really good!

Stomp on the ground
Moving clears a small area of non-cursed surfaces after they interact with you.


The idea would be to create a "trail" after the first character moves through a surface. Would not work with levitate/spread your wings, and the "trail" would be roughly the size of a player character. Could also be used to separate surfaces that touch each other to have more control over surface interaction for melee characters. Could come with a negative that either makes you take more damage from said surfaces or something, along with only working on fire/poison instead of working on water/blood etc. (Also probably wont work in any iteration for Lava/Source surfaces, or clouds for that matter)


Spell Sword
Physical melee attacks deals additional elemental damage based on the oldest elemental status effect the target is afflicted with, this damage scales with intelligence (and level?).


I always felt like the battlemage preset could use something that made it a bit more interesting and not make splitting your stats feel too awful. This way you can get a bonus that you can kind of control with yourself or your allies - and since some status effects like frozen reduces water resistance, It would synergize with itself. But also it creates this strategy of using elemental spells before physical attacks on enemies like undead that bleed poison to make sure you don't heal them with said attacks, It could also be a negative against enemies with innate burning that heals through burning or similar things. This also makes battle mages have an additional source of magical damage on attacks other than whatever element the weapons happen to have.
This is just the idea - I'm not sure what numbers these attacks would deal.

Unarmored: when one of your armors (phys/magic) gets depleted the next status(EVERY TYPE OF STATUS) afflicted to you is negated
This one is so variable i don't know how good it would be the one glaring weakness i see is when there is a surface underneath you when this activates which would reapply the status the next turn. The major strength being that physical statuses are so powerful ignoring them might be overpowered. Im unsure but provide feedback on this one please.

Armored: Gain 5% physical armor for every point in warfare
Really self explanatory its more useful than picture of health (+3% vit per level of warfare) but it would only really be useful later on

A change to guerilla i just thought up
Guerilla: Sneak attacks with ranged weapons and spells (This includes weapon skills) do 20% damage but Basic melee attacks do 40% damage