Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Do Weapon points affect only direct damage?

Hi all,

When you put points into Weapons (Bow, Crossbow, Single-handed, Two-handed), does it affect only the direct damage that weapon does or all damage (magic, etc)?

Something I don't understand: when I placed a point into "Two-handed" for my Wizard I noticed that the damage for "Staff of Magus" went up, but not for any of the other 3 skills (Flare, Midnight Oil, Magical Poison Dart) I have at the moment.

Thank you for any help.

Your spell damage is affected by Intelligence. Only weapon based damage skills are affected by weapon damage which is affected by your weapon pints

Okay. Then would a magic-based class ever have reason to put points into Weapon skills? Seems not. Thanks.

Melee classes usually not much either since the boost is very small, and other skills have a much better payoff.
Or maybe that's just my opinion

Oh okay! I wouldn't have expected that. Thanks.

I would say that the difference between a fighter or a ranger with minimal weapon skill points and those with more are very noticeable.

Its just that if youre playing jack of all trades build that you deal damage with spells and also make do with various elemental and environmental effects so the weapon isnt your primary most prominent tool of dealing damage.

Two-Handed skill dictates how much damage you deal when shooting or stabbing with your Staff.

Could create a proper Battlemage out of this.

The thing with weapon skills, btw, is that 10% is more than 10%.

That sounds silly, but let me explain:

If you do basic attacks of exactly 100 damage, and your enemy absorbs 50 due to armor, having 1 point in the weapon skill increases your damage to 110 total, but it shouldn't change the absorb. So that 10% just upped the final damage from 50 to 60, which is a fair bit more than 10%.

Basically, weapon skill is more powerful against enemies with high armor, but less impactful against lower armor. However, for a 2H warrior (for example) there aren't that many skills you really want to sink your points in, so putting a few into 2H is a good idea. (plus, with gear bonuses you can get up to +7 or +8 if you're lucky, which is a good chunk of damage)