Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Interesting fact about summoning

It is quite hard to do a hybrid build in this game because you do not get many attribute points and hybrid builds are more stretched attribute-wise. And generally, there's very little point in investing in a skill if you have not invested a lot of attribute points into its corresponding attribute, because high attributes make you much much better. For instance, if you have not invested in strength, then you cannot use very good swords, and will do way less damage (since the better equipment you won't be able to use is generally MUCH better). If you have not invested in intelligence, then you can use spells, but they will be unlikely to apply effects and will have long cooldowns.

I have been trying to figure out a hybrid build in which one aspect of the hybrid is not attribute-dependent. One example would be special arrows: their chance to apply effects is not affected by dexterity, so you could be a warrior or mage and still use them effectively without any investment in dexterity.

I found out about another thing that is not attribute dependent in the game: summoning.

Summons only scale by level, not intelligence. To test this out, I gave Summon Fire Elemental to a 5 Intelligence character. He had a -40% intelligence bonus. In the same game, I had the same spell on my mage with 15 intelligence. For the purposes of this experiment, I got a character's lore skill up to 5, so I could see everything about the summon. The two characters' fire elementals had all the same stats. Only when I leveled up did those stats change.

The only thing that intelligence affects about summons is, of course, the cool down time. However, summons are the one type of spell where you don't need a great cool down time because your summon should survive for a while (given that their best use is tanking battles where they have the correct elemental resistances), and you can only have one. And typically, a 6 intelligence character (i.e. someone who has a 5 in intelligence, but happens to have equipped one +intelligence item) will have summoning cool downs equal to the length of the summon, which is fine.

So a character with 5 or 6 in intelligence is going to be essentially equally good at summoning as a dedicated mage.

This means that a warrior, ranger, or rogue (none of whom have a lot of skills they need to invest in) can invest in the various magic skills and still use summons effectively. The synergy is particularly good for rangers and rogues, who rely on tanks to take the pressure while they do damage. Summons could be those tanks.

With a 32 skill-point investment, you could get ALL summons, allowing you to be super flexible about what you deploy, allowing you to have an appropriate tank in each battle.

With a few increases in intelligence I would say a warrior benefits just as much as the dex classes from the different summons. The warrior can then use the different touch spells with a good chance to CC and then the summons not only tanks but becomes a way for the warrior to deal other damage than physical.

Yes, summons only scale with level. It would be interesting if they took penalties based on low Int (instead of summoning a level 10 spider, you summon a level 5 if you are too dumb).

My main tank is a hybrid and I don't see that he is begging for anything. I made sure he had 8 int so he wouldn't take penalties to most spells and the rest went into str, con, and spd. The only thing he lacks is speed, really. He has so much to do between setting up the field with rain/oil/poison for my nukers and buffing/debuffing and the occasional heal, he rarely has enough action points to do everything I'd like him to. I'm sure if I had designed him to be a hybrid that tried to do lots of damage through both str and int he would have more of an issue. As it is, though, he is the least fragile of the group and is rather indispensable because of his ability to both boost the party and cripple the abilities of multiple enemies while also doing reasonable damage when he gets around to it.

In all honesty I don't agree with the idea that hybrids are too weak, even on hard mode, it seems as though people are confusing the fact that it's not the most optimal end-game orientated approach and sure on the way you may have to sacrifice some individual toughness by dropping some CON for INT, but that doesn't matter when you have all of those summons taking most of the hits.

The min-maxer will say there's not enough attributes to go around and yet refuse to take talents like "know it all" and "bigger and better" simply because later on you can get more bang for your buck by trading them in, or so that they can put together their GC/CBK/WtS/Leech combo. Similarly you may be looking for equipment that will raise your attributes, rather than lusting after that 1ap sneak-guerrilla combo. That end game focused, blinkered, approach is strange considering how the common opinion is that the mid to end game is far too easy, boringly so. I'd rather take those "trash" talents and transfer some of that end game godhood for early game utility.

Summons are very powerful. While they say -40% penalty (or more) on low int the warrior with that will get the same summon as the +150% bonus wizard. 1 point in any class pretty much gives you summon access, so it's very easy to get 4 on the field at all times, all at maximum HP and damage.

Yeah, seriously overpowered...