Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Character creation + stat/abilities still weird

There is a few things that are still weird about the stat and ability system.

-The rogue/knight/cleric just feel like lesser versions of survivor/warrior/wizard.
-It's still 1 stat based, which doesn't give much variety in how you build your stats.
-There are 5 survivor abilities which actually belong to everyone, not only the ranger. (Crafting, Lockpicking, Loremaster, Pickpocketing, Sneaking)
-There are only 3 real ranger abilities. (Bow, Crossbow, Way of the Ranger)
-The warrior has 7, only repair is the odd one there.
-The wizard has also 7, but some don't do anything as for now.
-You do actually need Way of the Ranger lvl 3 to get the resurrect spell.
-My Warrior has a lot of points in Wizard abilities from traits, which feels a bit weird as well.
-The henchmen don't need social skills, because they aren't allowed to talk to npc's mostly.
-Hybrid is useless now.

It's a bit of a mess now. I have a suggestion of how it could be improved a little.

-Remove rogue/knight/cleric

-Seperate ranger and survivor skills, to something like this:

Warrior
1H sword/axe (instead of 1H)
2H sword/axe (instead of 2H)
All the rest are ok.

Wizard
Sourcery needs to do something, rest ok.

Ranger/Assasin
Dagger
Spear
Bow
Crossbow
Way of Ranger

Survivor
Crafting
Lockpicking
Repair
Loremaster
Pickpocketing
Sneaking

Social
Those are ok.

-The next thing is remove the survivor and social skills from the henchmen and give them less ability points/lvl up.

-Make the trait system only influence the Survivor and Social skills. So that being considerate doesn't suddenly make me an air magic novice. This is also better, because the henchmen can't get the traits anyway.

-The next thing is improve the stat system, it's not like super important, but i just feel a bit dumb to put mostly every point into 1 stat.

-I also would like to see skill upgrades, so if you buy the whirlwind skillbook, you will automaticly unlearn dust devil. This also prevents players from spamming the same skill with a different name.

You are only figuring this now ?

I am quoting early access:
"Classless character creation lets you design the character of your choice."

So far, this is not a classless system (warrior, wizard, ...) , and it doesn't let you design the character of your choices (you have no choice of skills at the char creation)

You forgot to mention that there are 5 physical abilities, and 1 mental one. So this is unbalanced. Period. Unless you want to focus gameplay on physical characters.
Godammit Larian, Gary Gygax figured that out 40 years ago...


I don't agree with you. Character creation and leveling might not be important in a FPS or RTS, but it is a huge part of any RPG "fun".
A RPG without a proper character creation/leveling would just be theater, or reading a book.

The whole system needs to be overhauled. At least, remove the stupid class names, so people don't think "classes":

Combat skills
Magic skills
Subterfuge skills
Knowledge skills.
...for example.


I totally fully agree with you on this one.

I'm just trying to be nice, I'd like a more complex stat system too. But first of all everything has to make sense.

OMG, you might not like it, but this is one of the first common sense writing I read on this forum in a long time. If ever.

I think Larian until now thought much about the fun, making new area's and make the game itself nicer by adding new aspects. They had to be able to show funstuff to the media. Now is the time to think about character creation and stability of the game, lot of players still have or are having new stability issues since this patch.

And you will have people that want their battlemages, and fighting druids, and nimble double rapier wielding ladies, and heavy berzerk barbarians, and plate clad knights that raises their Fallen comrades, and magic enhanced assassins, and, and, and whatever.

This what a classless system should be about. Or this is how I imagine it should be, I might be wrong.

I really feel like a lot of love has been put into story writing (even if it has its flaws) and game engine, but not enough in the basics and features.

And I mean, every decent RPG offers you to buy "perk" points, in exchange of "flaw" points, or to buy some "flaws" so that you can buy more "Perks"...
Here, characters creation have no Flaws = RPG miss.


Moreover, Cooperative gaming is an amazing opportunity for great RPG moments between players, and Larian is missing it.

I already deleted it, because it was what I wanted to say but not the way I wanted to say it. Larian just invested major time in making poison arrows, explosive arrows, stun arrows, i'm sure there are over 10 types of arrows and crafting recipes. So much that you want your bowguy just to be a bowguy, just for the fun you can have of being a bowguy. The 'magic' is already included in your skills and features.

And don't forget that a lot of RPG players are number crushers, that LOVE to fine tune their characters (I am definitely not one of them...) to some crazy détails.

What kind of fine tuning is there. one ability point and one talent point ? I can't believe the amount of talent points went from 2 to 1 in last patch "just to make choice harder", gimme a break...

And you put a point in "talking to animals", and all of a sudden, you can talk to animals ?
Come on Larian, all those talents/perks/whatever the name are great quest opportunities, don't miss them. Like going to speak to a "druid", and having to perform a quest for him in exchange of the perk, would make more sense than "go find something to do to those three stupid lazy sailors that can't move their lazy asses and do something" quest).

Bullshits, bullshits, bullshits.

This is what you used to do in DD and BD.

You are definitely right again. In Use, there is no difference between skills and spells...

It's all fine and good to want quests for things like Pet Pal. But making quests is a tremendous amount of work designing, implementing, testing, and bug-fixing. Lots of quests shown in the Kickstarter campaign have been greatly simplified and consequences and further questlines have been cut off (the lighthouse soldiers, the charmed orc woman).



-The rogue/knight/cleric just feel like lesser versions of survivor/warrior/wizard.
They do start out with different preset skills. However if the game lets you choose your starting skills, then that distinction does become less important.

-It's still 1 stat based, which doesn't give much variety in how you build your stats.
A good point. I believe Swen mentioned the difficulty of building hybrid classes by the current rules is something they'll have to fix.

-There are 5 survivor abilities which actually belong to everyone, not only the ranger. (Crafting, Lockpicking, Loremaster, Pickpocketing, Sneaking)
That's why it's called the "Survivor" category, not the "Ranger" category. It's kinda a catchall.

-There are only 3 real ranger abilities. (Bow, Crossbow, Way of the Ranger)
-The warrior has 7, only repair is the odd one there.
-The wizard has also 7, but some don't do anything as for now.
I don't think matching the exact number of abilities in each group is that critical, since you can pick from whatever group you want.

-You do actually need Way of the Ranger lvl 3 to get the resurrect spell.
Yes, hopefully they'll change that to allow for more than one class to use certain skills.

-My Warrior has a lot of points in Wizard abilities from traits, which feels a bit weird as well.
Swen said in a post that the current Trait system is a placeholder and they'll be changing it:

(Trait) Bonuses for Conversation are Ambiguous



-The henchmen don't need social skills, because they aren't allowed to talk to npc's mostly.
Agreed, some of those skills should be disabled on henchmen and companions.


-Remove rogue/knight/cleric
What's the point of that? Besides, there's a difference between a ranger and a rogue, and a Cleric and a Wizard.



-Seperate ranger and survivor skills, to something like this:

Warrior
1H sword/axe (instead of 1H)
2H sword/axe (instead of 2H)
All the rest are ok.
Why only sword/axe, and not club? Is the idea that clubs and maces should get no bonuses from Abilities, but have lower requirements to use?


Wizard
Sourcery needs to do something, rest ok.
It will, but not in the alpha version. It'll be locked at some point until the plot event where you can use it.


Ranger/Assasin
Dagger
Spear
I don't see any reason why these shouldn't be covered by 1H/2H, other than arbitrarily making each school of abilities have the same number.

Bow
Crossbow
Way of Ranger
I'm still pushing for a "Way of the Rogue" ability, although that would require some adjustments to the requirements for stat books (I think Either/Or would fix that, though)

I'd be inclined to do away with "Way of the (class)" as a skill name entirely; "...of the Rogue" vs "...of the Ranger" is a pretty arbitrary distinction in the first place. (That, and calling someone a "rogue" is generally an insult. It's only used in games because it's mildly less of an insult than calling the person a "thief".)

Stats - the problem here is that relatively few mental stats actually work well in the context of a CRPG. Even "intelligence" runs into this problem (since figuring things out mostly falls on the player, regardless of how brilliant the characters are supposed to be). I can't help but still feel that including the stats as such is part of the problem; either eliminating them entirely (radical a design overhaul though that might seem) or changing them to be derived from skills rather than purchased directly (so your Strength goes up as your strength-themed skills improve - and that can include both non-combat skills contributing to strength, and skills improving more than one relevant stat, like 1H weapons boosting both Strength and Agility).

Combat/Magic/Social/Support does seem like a more appropriate skill categorization in what is supposed to be a classless game. Something else that needs to be addressed in the process is the fact that the Dexterity-related melee weapons are still dependent on Strength-based skills. I'm actually not sure WHY that distinction (Str-based vs Dex-based) needs to exist; being strong helps with a spear as much as a sword and being agile is useful to someone with a mace as much as it is to someone with a dagger. Even bow-use is heavily dependent on how strong you are.

But the bonuses said abilities would provide would be completely different, because one is for ranged and the other for (evasive/stealth) melee.




I can agree with that, although it's just a name for a category, so changing the name is just cosmetic.

The Ranger class is called Survivor, so the Survivor only needs the Survivor skills and all the other classes need Warrior and Survivor skills or Wizard and Survivor skills. That's what's the confusion for me is about. I thought it might be good to split the weapon abilities, because the Rogue/Ranger otherwise has very little combat abilities, maybe add options like dual wield might also be good.

I just feel they can't go let it seem to have classes and then kinda don't, but kinda yes. Most people playing for the first time, this is much too confusing. No-one will even think of going dagger or spear survivor, because they start of with bow and all their skills are for bow. If they want to split classes it might be even good to disable all the Warrior and Wizard abilities for Ranger.

I've made quite a few dagger-using Rogues, some were even before the Rogue class was added. The Rogue preset doesn't start with any bow skills. Should there be more skills added? Yes, but your notion that no one will play as a dagger-rogue is absurd.




Could you re-phrase that sentence so that it is somewhat coherent, please?




That's a silly idea - especially because you seem to be only applying that standard to the Ranger/Survivor class. If someone wants to use other abilities then let them.

If so, then remove the class names, so that people don't think classes.

Why would the "Rogue" be the only one who focuses on trying to dodge attacks?

For that matter, what *is* a "Rogue" in a classless system?

Let's suppose for a moment that the "Warrior" is someone who focuses on combat skills and has only a smattering of noncombat skills because most of his skill points went into the Combat category.

If the "Rogue" is someone who is deadly with knives and untouchable due to his reflexes - the modern MMO-style - then he also won't have more than a smattering of non-combat skills (which includes things like lockpicking, stealth, and charm). In fact, he's probably less of a "rogue" and more of a knife-fighter... in effect, he's also a Warrior.

If the "Rogue" is someone who brings a lot of support and social skills to the table - the traditional style of D&D and similar games - then (as was also the case in those) he won't have much in the way of Combat skills because his points are all in Social/Support stuff (like lockpicking, stealth, and charm). This is more classically "rogue", but he definitely isn't going to be a super-dodger who can shred demons in an eyeblink with his little tiny knives.

For that matter... why is the "Warrior" only useful with melee weapons and utterly inept with ranged ones? Why would the Ranger not know how to handle a blade? (Most fantasy rangers sure know how to, often more so than they're good with the bow.)

This crosses over somewhat into the issue of "Way of the Warrior/Ranger" overlapping very heavily with the specific-weapon skills (1H/2H/bow/xbow/etc), to the point of making the latter almost obsolete... and the specific-weapon skills aren't helped out any by the fact that the Str/Dex stats also do what they do and more.

On top of that, the "Way of the..." skills are overlapping pretty heavily with other stats, skills, and talent functions. They're actually in the way of having interesting talents, because a lot of potential talents are already wrapped up in the "Way of the..." skills. Wouldn't Natural Armor, Vitality Boost, Cooldown Reduction, etc, be at least somewhat more interesting as talents than the current "+1 to a skill" set? They would - and they'd be useful and appropriate to a lot of character types, not just warrior - except that they've already been grabbed by this "Warrior Class" skill. The same is true of Way of the Ranger (other than arrow recovery, it's duplicating the effects of various stat increases), and would also be the case with any prospective "Way of the Rogue/Cleric/Wizard/Elvis Impersonator/etc" class skills.

Consider this structure as an alternative (keeping other changes to a minimum for clarity's sake):

Combat Skills:

Armor Specialization
Blocking (aka Shield Specialization)
Bodybuilding
Leadership
Melee Weapons
Ranged Weapons
Reflexes
Willpower

Support Skills:

Crafting*
Lockpicking
Loremaster
Lucky Charm
Pickpocketing
Repair*
Sneaking

* Why are these separate skills, anyway? It seems really odd that I can craft a sword but be totally unable to sharpen one.

Magic and Social stay the same, other than the possible transplant of Willpower and Lucky Charm to Combat and Support.

So what's the big deal? Well, the largely-redundant specific weapon skills are gone and can be covered by Melee Weapons and Ranged Weapons, respectively. Otherwise, the arrangement is more about function than class concept (Reflexes makes more sense as a Combat skill given that it makes you better at evading attacks, etc. I grant that I'm not clear on what Bodybuilding does right now.)



Now look at the class definitions used earlier.

Mr. Warrior, unsurprisingly, continues to sink most of his skill points into the Combat skills, which includes effective dodging (Reflexes), armor and shield use, weapon skills (melee AND ranged), etc.

Mr. Rogue-the-Knife does similarly, albeit probably with more emphasis on Evasion and Melee Weapons and less on things like Blocking and Leadership. Lo and behold, he might have a few more points to put into rogue-like stuff such as Lockpicking because he probably isn't investing as heavily in some of the other combat skills, although he still won't have as many support tricks as...

Mr. Rogue-Support-Guy still exists as before, and he's still mostly invested in Social/Support. On the other hand, when it comes down to fighting, he can just as effectively look into a light infantry style instead of a knives-and-dodging one. He won't be as effective at fighting as Mr. Knife, but that's the tradeoff he chose to make.

The ranger keeps working pretty much as-is. So does the wizard, who probably doesn't mind having equal access to things like Reflexes (if anyone needs to dodge the arrow heading toward his knee, it's Mr. Bathrobe) without getting stuck having to buy into a knives-and-backstabbing bundle to do it.

Moreover, this works just as well for other mix-and-match concepts like a cleric or paladin (some combat, but also some emphasis on magic and/or social skills), an out-and-out "crafter/artisan/merchant" character, and so on - these aren't hampered by the rearrangement at all.


In the process, we've improved the flexibility of the system in handling various character concepts, got new talent possibilities (because a rogue or a wizard might like to be tougher or a cleric to have better sight range), and have dropped several skills that are currently mostly redundant (and lock you a little too much into using a specific weapon type).

There used to be a Reflexes Ability that contributed to Evasion, but that was removed and now Dexterity is used instead. You can only put points into Reflexes on character creation now, and that's because it hasn't been removed yet.



I believe that there's a big enough difference between a slow, tanky warrior and a fast, fragile warrior that there is a niche for such an ability.

I do think that there may be a real problem where a spear-using warrior needs DEX, and so doesn't get any synergy bonuses for his warrior skills that want STR.




You're right that many of the bonuses from the existing "Way of the..." skills could be given as Talents. Others (like the +4 AP per turn one) are too good to be given as talents and/or only work as part of the Ability skillset.


****

I have absolutely no problem at all with renaming the categories of abilities and reorganizing them. I just see that as a mere cosmetic change, because you can ALREADY mix and match abilities.

I do agree that right now the Weapon Specialization skills are worthless, because they only contribute one or two points of damage - much less than you get from simply finding a better weapon. I'm not sold on combining one-handed and two-handed into one catchall "melee weapons" category.

Sven said that this system was like a placeholder, and that it will probably be refined in some coming patches. I myself will be waiting for these patches to see where Larian is aiming. But I am afraid it is too late, and the system will stay as shallow and dumb as it is right now.

Why did these ***** put "reason" and "willpower" as talents, and not attributes ? I must really be an idiot for not seeing the meaning of this.

How about:
- make skills* (spells and special attacks) require your stats (dex, int etc.) instead of "way of..."
- get rid of "way of..." and give their bonuses to the talents
- make some spells require more then one stat (ie. whirling attack Str 8 + Dex 10)
- make elemental abilities reduce casting time and icrease damage of certain element

Also hi! I am new here so please don't kill me :P
*and I am very sorry, but I am not familiar with terminology yet

Dude. Relax.


Anyway, as people have mentioned, we should keep in mind the alpha stat system is still "placeholder" per Swen. That said, I think there are some good ideas on this thread. Especially:

1) The "way of..." abilities are redundant and need to be overhauled/ditched, while the weapon specialization abilities as currently implemented are so weak as to be almost useless.
2) The skills currently categorized as "social" (except "lucky charm" and "leadership", which have non-dialogue implications) aren't necessary for henchmen.
3) More generally, Larian should think about abilities more along the lines of "Combat/Magic/Social/Support". The possible results of this structure wouldn't only be cosmetic (as these ability groupings and their components could also be linked to attributes in a more coherent/logical way); it would also eliminate the whole confusion surrounding "warrior vs. survivor/ranger/rogue" as currently envisioned (especially as the latter "class" types can be interpreted and developed in many different ways, and a rigid conception of a "survivor/ranger" as exclusively a bow user doesn't really make sense).