Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Mechanics are the most important part to get right.

Now that the developers at Larian do not have to align their mechanical systems with D&D to get WotC job, they are free to go in any direction they want. So, I hope that they will take that opportunity to learn lessons from previous games and also go back to some of the great features of previous games. I personally find completely custom characters to be by far the most interesting way to play this style of game, so the ability to build characters from scratch has the most value to me.

I think the area with the most promise is the class system. The DOS games have had the most flexible approach, which actually I think has room for more definition. Although 5E might look like it has a hard class system, there are so many ways to customize it that it ends up being very open to player choice (multiclassing, subclasses, races, backgrounds). I would like to see a structured class system but with a high degree of customizability.

The combat system is one that I feel concerned about. The armor system in DOS2 was a major issue for me, and I hope that nothing like that will be repeated. I think the overemphasis on surfaces in the past 3 games was excessive and I would like to see it reduced. BG3 casters also felt weaker than in previous games, which perhaps was deliberate, but it would be fun to have some of the old spell effects again.

The magic schools in DOS1 were the most exciting to play, and offered the best ways to mix "skills" of different types in small quantities. The spell trees in DOS2 felt watered down and less fun in comparison. The spellbooks in BG3 were pretty good, especially considering the task of automating all of the interactions, so I hope to see a similar depth of spells, although not as many are necessary. If Divinity uses open magic schools again, I think the DOS1 balance between focus and diversity was the best one.

In the past three games, DOS1 was also the game with the best attribute system. Although it was the least similar to D&D, it was a deep system with many interesting ways to play, and rewarded players for building attributes and talents around skills. I hope for a return to highly customizable character features like that.

I am excited about the game!

I feel kind of meh about classes.

There was some amount of appeal in DOS2's flexibility, with points providing both inherent stat effects, as well as access to skills. Allowing for builds to be made around various different aspects (Do you want certain stat effects? Do you want certain skills?)

I think the only major drawback to DOS2's system was how shallow it was. With certain stats just being optimal and there being very few skills overall (Which then also become more limited when you factor in the armour system it had) so often builds ended up feeling very same-y (Even more so with Divinity Unleashed mod whereby maxing out Aerothurge for the 50% skill cooldown was super important)

5e (And Larian's homebrew on it for BG3) has a lot of pigeonholeing involved in what otherwise should not be a cornerstone of character development. For example, races and backgrounds - I don't want to have to play a certain race or background just because it offers benefits to my build, I want to ROLEPLAY as a character of my choosing.

Multiclassing is cool and all, though 5e does have a bunch of limitations on it, such as accessing the mandatory Extra Attacks for martials, Feat selection, Spell Slots, having to manage casting stats... While DOS2's "Multiclassing" had none of these silly restrictions.

Meanwhile, there's also plenty of other ways to do character development. For example, Kingdom of Amalur had its standard skill tree that was populated enough where you could go pure Warrior/Mage/Rogue or you could make hybrids. Or you have things like FFX's Sphere Grid (Which is similar to Path of Exile's skill tree) which offers a lot of choice about how you build a character. You could also look at something like Grim Dawn's Devotion system, while it's only a supplementary progression system it could be tweaked into something fit for a full on character building format.

None of these require set "Classes" but will naturally flow into a class like build, while offering someone complete freedom if they desire.


Well... Combat systems are up in the air right now. There's some question about whether this new game is an ARPG or CRPG.

But yeah, hopefully that god(woken) awful armour system has been retired permanently.

As far as surfaces go... I think there's still a lot of potential in them. I think the best way to go about them is to provide a lot more complexity into what they can do, with a bunch more combinations and effects that can be created. BUT to move away from the whole "Literally EVERYTHING makes/interacts with a surface". That way they're an optional part of combat that one has to actively seek out and utilize, that can reward strategic usage and creative character builds. While people who aren't specifically messing with them will have to deal with them less often.

Honestly, magic in BG3 is absolutely busted. The only way it feels weak is when put alongside Larian's ultra-giga-busted Martial homebrew (Double standard action Haste, Tavern Brawler being cracked af, Elixirs of Strength out the wazoo, Fast Hands for extra bonus action...) but even then you've got the busted "Wet" abuse and damage riders per projectile...

DOS2 had by far the weakest magic, thanks to that atrocious armour system as it made you want to stack either physical or magical damage, which tended to end up with favouring physical because that's what your weapon users do (Also, enemies could be immune to certain magical elements further pushing you towards physical)

I can't comment too much on DOS1's magic as I didn't use it much, I quickly found the most effective strategy being just having everyone dual wield wands and regular attack everything...


As far as attributes go... I think Pillars of Eternity has done them best. At least when it comes to character building (World interaction... Not so much)

Every attribute is useful for every build. It's simply up to the player to decide how much they value each aspect.

Where it went wrong was world interactions, that were based on the standard idea of each stat... Meaning my Mage was punching down walls because she prioritized Might (Increased Damage and Healing). While my Barbarian was making all the insightful comments and solving puzzles because he had high Intellect (Increased AoE sizes for his cleave effects and increased durations improving his Rage uptime).

Which is not particularly great for role playing... (Whilst also bringing up the idea that perhaps "Stats" and "Character ability" should be 2 separate systems. So that you can allocate your stats to best supplement your combat effectivness, whilst also choosing particular characteristics for your character)

I can't honestly say that I see classless systems as a net plus.
In fact, in practical terms, I only really like "classless systems" when they basically force you to make mutually exclusive choices that push you to specialize and to create the equivalent of classes (different characters with very different playstyles).
I absolutely despise rulesets where all characters end up being "jack of all trades" and able to do all basically the same thing (i.e. they are all able to wear the heaviest armors around with no downside, they are all equally competent in melee, ranged and/or magic, etc).

I share the concern about the return of the armor system ,but given what Swen Vincke had to say about it in the past I'm hopeful they got the message that the mechanic wasn't really that well-received.

You only like classless systems that force you to pick separate classes? That's funny.

Classless systems give you the best of both worlds.
If you prefer a rigid structure with traditional roles you can take abilities that only fall within your strict cookie cutter guidelines.
Others who enjoy the freedom to create unique characters get to use that freedom to pick and choose their abilities and design exactly the character that they would like to play.

Yeah, that was precisely my point:
I don't think "classless" systems are inherently a plus and in fact I like them only when at the end of the day lead to the same result of class-based systems... Mutually exclusive choices offering sensibly different playstyles.

I also dislike class-based systems that don't offer enough differentiation between classes, incidentally.

If you are finding this "incoherent" the only explanation is that you didn't get the point I was making.

I didn't find anything you said incoherent, just amusing.

As noted classless systems with no restrictions already give you want you want. You can create your cookie cutter archetypes to your heart's content.
I can create a variety of characters tailored exactly to how I want to play in any given playtrough.

The point isn't what I "can" create, but the mutually exclusive choices I'm forced to make.

If I can dress up everyone with the heaviest armor class in the game, with no downside whatsoever, and the only reason to wear lighter armor is self-imposed flavor, for instance, the system is probably crap.

Same if I can maximize both melee prowess and magical power with no compromise of any kind.

Now I am confused, given the freedom to play exactly how you want to play you would choose to play in a way you don't enjoy?

Also the best classless systems force you to make choices, if you increase your durability it comes at a cost of locking you out of a high end ability that you would only have access to had you specialized.

I can tell.
Where did you get that?
The way I "enjoy it" is precisely to have each member of the party offering a distinct role and playing differently from the other characters (with some possible occasional overlap, of course, like having two different types of "frontliner").

Bravo. Exactly.
That was precisely my point from the beginning: "classless" systems are at their BEST only when they *still* create distinctions between different builds that are equivalent to having classes.

From when you said it:
If all you create are your cookie cutter archetypes this would never be an issue.


This is always available to you in a classless system. Just create your preferred classes.

A matter of semantics I suppose. Classless systems give you the freedom to build the characters you want to build. Just because those choices have consequences doesn't make them classes.

"cookie cutter archetypes" is your weird jumping to conclusions.

You already repeated it twice, while I didn't mention anything of that sort once.

I think the crux of Tuco's opinion is that something like Skyrim's design is inherently uninteresting. When you're fully capable of maxing every skill to 100 and getting every perk point, it doesn't offer any meaningful choices.

Yes, you CAN just ignore all the skills and perks you don't want, but the end result is still not very interesting. You max out all the skills you want and grab all the perks you want and have little thought about it.

Meanwhile a flexible system that does offer limitations would be more interesting, that way you cannot become a "Master of all trades" and also have to decide whether you fully specialize into a specific role or if you sacrifice power for more utility by getting a little bit from other roles too.

So I agree with the point that a classless system isn't inherently good, because things like Skyrim exist which facilitate Master of all Trades builds with a total lack of actual decision making besides "I arbitrarily choose not to partake in things"

But on the other hand I'd disagree that they aren't a net plus, at least when they're done right. It's pretty trivial to make systems that offer flexibility that is far better than a class system where you're stuck with whatever arbitrary things a class contains (Yes, even with multiclass oportunities it's still very limiting in what you can have access to, even more so when you slap on D&D crap like Feat acquisition, Extra Attack acquisition, Spell Slot progression and other such things dependent on having X levels in Y class for non-class specific boosts), whilst providing limitations to prevent the system devolving into universal builds.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, things like Kingdom of Amalur's skill trees, FFX's Sphere Grid, Path of Exile's skill tree and Grim Dawn's Devotion system are all examples of providing flexibility. You cannot become a Master of all Trades with them (Except in FFX if you overlevel and thus can acquire the entire sphere grid) due to them having limitations by way of only granting limited points to place into them.

Meanwhile they offer a lot of depth of choice. You can choose to fully flesh out a particular aspect. Or you can sacrifice potential in an aspect to pick up some other things. With also the potential to become a "Jack of all Trades" where you can do everything, just not very well (With you likely lacking the ability to use the best stuff from each aspect. I.e. You won't have the heaviest armour, the biggest weapons, or the strongest spells)

Heck, in some cases (Notably, GD's Devotion system) there can be such limitation that you cannot even obtain everything from a particular aspect. Meaning even if you go fully into say, Fire Damage, you'll still have to pick and choose which Fire Damage bonuses you actually want to take.

Well, first off, that it will not be DnD mechanics is a huge plus for me.

That said, I didn't care for the mechanics in D:OS1 either because I found it to be extremely superficial and shallow, and especially that all you needed to do was to give every single one of your party members a specific set of spellcasting abilities and that was it. None of the other abilities, including especially marshal abilities, mattered by contrast. However, from all the interviews I have seen thus far with Swen, he seems to get this point as well, and seems to understand that mechanics is an area where they need to improve quite a bit over their past games. I fully expect it will be a classless system, because that's what fits their claim of wanting to build a game with maximum player agency. That translates into giving players the ability to be and do anything and everything within one character, as that's what most people interpret as having "agency" (whereas I certainly don't accept this). But I am willing to wait and see if Larian can successfully pull off a classless system where there is NOT just one optimal or "perfect" build.