Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Initiative and summons, and Delay

Hi all

I've recently been playing DOS with my brother. Things are looking pretty good so far, but there's weird issues with the initiative bar and we were wondering if these things are bugs or works in progress, or if they are working as intended (in which case I'm curious as to why).

Issue 1: Summons
My brother and I chose characters that both have the summon Wolf spell. My brother's char has slightly higher initiative than my character, and wolves must have a higher initiative than my character but less than my brothers. So, what happens in many fights is this - my brother's char summons his wolf, and it appears next in the initiative bar, and gets to go immediatley. He does his wolf's turn then it goes to my character. I summon my wolf, but he appears BEFORE me in the initiative list and doesn't get to go at all this turn. This seems like a bug. Either both wolves should have to wait until the next turn, or, my wolf should get placed on the initiative bar directly after my character.

Issue 2: Delay
This is question is a bit more straight forward. It seems very easy to exploit this with high initiative characters because it allows them to get 2 back to back turns. Is the current implementation final? The first time I delayed my character, I expected him to stay at the end of the initiative bar for the rest of the fight (or until someone else delayed). Right now it seems to encourage a play style where you try to initiate combat with your enemies far away, delay your high initiative characters, let the AI waste its turn moving into range, then take double turns with the delayed characters.

To me both of these issues greatly boost the importance of the initiative stat (besides the normal result of making you go earlier in combat, it gives you ways 'game' the systems).

Sorry if this has been discusses already, but I couldn't find it in my searches. I think this game has amazing potential, the amount and variety of skills and builds and enemies has already made for some amazing fights and strategies, but I do worry that the level of complexity means that if the enemy AI isn't absolutely amazing, it will be very easy to exploit.

Keep up the great work!

There has been a discussion about delay here :

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=491122&page=1

I couldn't agree more with OP and the more I think about it it seems like, dare i say it, a flaw in the turn based design.
Let me preface this by saying, from what Ive played of this game so I is absolutely amazing. I really feel Larian have a potential
masterpiece on their hands.

It feels like combat is divided into a series of rounds that are completely independent of each other. So you have situations
like:

-the wolf scenario described by the OP
-the double turn exploit described by the OP
-Seems like if cast minor charm on an enemy that has acted before me this round, the round ends and the counter gets decremented before the effected enemy has had a turn with the condition

They could solve all of these issues with one imo fairly simple design change.
Treat combat like a "revolving door" of characters. The turn order gets determined by Initiative score/rng, whatever, then
after the first character acts he simply goes to the end of the line. This solves most of these issues.

-The wolf should just be placed immediately after the character who summoned it if the wolfs init is higher than the caster.
-Delay just puts you at the end, thus becoming useless (which imo it always was aside from the double turn exploit)
-any timed based skills used by any character would have their durations based on when they acted in combat. So for the charm spell, its duration would become 2 turns of the effected character.

I realize this is prob too much of a change to implement at this time but I feel it would solve so much of the weird 'timing' issues Ive experienced in this game (which is brilliant btw).

What level / stats? Or just in general, how far back do you usually get placed in combat?
I tried a witch/witch and witch/wayfarer combination, and they worked as expected at the start of the game (up to level 2), with the second summon always added after the first. I never had 2 characters with Summon Wolf in earlier builds, but then even at higher levels the wolf always went after the caster (with the same main character initiative, a summon by the first can be placed after the second).

If I delay my turn, though, the second wolf gets placed after the first one, rather than after the caster (and using the undead swordsman scroll places it in the same position, between two opponents, it would have if summoned earlier).

We're level 5 now, not sure what our stats are. My brother's character was the wayfarer and mine was the witch.

Now that you mention it, it did seem like early in our game (i.e. at low levels), it worked better: we would both usually be first in the queue, he would summon his wolf, then it would be my turn to summon mine, then both wolves would act.

But in later fights (I'd say once we reached level 3), the wayfarer is usually first in the queue, then some of the enemies, then the witch, followed by a mix of more enemies and the companions. Both wolves will slot in right after the wayfarer, so the wayfarer's wolf gets a turn but the witch's wolf doesn't.

fyi I even put a point into speed for the witch to try to fix the issue, but no luck.