Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Brainstorm: Making Hybrids more interesting/better

In all honesty I think Hybrids are mostly fine depending on what you are trying to do. A common strategy is just to get the bare minimum attribute required to use their skill with a 100% success rate and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game.

Yet if you try to go 50/50 and make both skills viable at once usually you end up starved for AP, HP, and don't perform as well... unless you know every single secret in the game or are playing as a Lonewolf.

So the hope of this brainstorming thread is to try to find ways to make these hybrids better
-Physical + Magical
-Marshal + Scoundrel/Ranger

So far I only have two ideas.

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1) Quick Swap Talent: With this talent you can either swap weapons at the start of a turn for free or alternatively it could allow you to swap it at anytime during your turn for free but once. Allowing you to switch from knives to bows or from two handed axes to staves for example.
-Requirement: Two points in two separate physical skills.

2) Swords/Knives/Axes that Serve as staffs and wands: I like to call these Foci Weapons but the basic concept is that these uncommon weapons can be used to physically attack and do the ranged magic attack. As well when randomized they can have bonuses from both the mage and Rogue/Warrior pool. So one that increases intelligence and Dexterity would be possible.

Well, they are implementing "spell crafting" which allows you to merge 2 spells to create an entirely new one, but from what I've seen, the resulting spell will belong to a specific school of magic. I actually think it'd be cool if by crafting a "fire" and "earth" spell together, you would create a spell that actually belongs to both the fire and earth skills and requires that you put skill points in both. They could do the same thing with the non-magical skills.

The idea being that by putting stats into 2 different areas, you aren't "multiclassing" but rather you're creating an entirely new class.

I think that would be cool.

Yeah, even back in the alpha, one thing I proposed was skills which were "either/or" skills. Like Phoenix Dive would require you to know EITHER Warrior 3 or Fire 3 to learn, but if you knew either that was all you'd need, and it would take the higher of your STR or INT stats in its calculations.

But given how D:OS EE's approach has been to eliminate redundant skills, and making the roles of skill groups more distinct, I'm not sure Larian is all that keen on the idea.

I like the quick swap idea. I think there also just needs to be more gear, both random and unique, targeted at hybrids. They could even have, say, both a strength and and an intelligence requirement. Also could be skills and talents that reward doing various things, like casting a spell increases your next weapon attack damage by 25%, as a simple concept.

I agree combined skills from two trees should either require or perhaps benefit from investing in both trees. Say, explode combined with battering ram makes you deal fire damage and light people when you charge: knockdown and physical damage controlled by man-at-arms and strength, fire damage and burn chance controlled by pyro tree and intelligence. Or there's an AP penalty for not having enough points in either tree.

I actually prefer the opposite. Like, maybe it'd require both Warrior 3 AND Fire 1, so it's a skill that's distinctly for warriors, but it gives you more choices, rather than just pumping all your skill-points directly into the warrior skills.

That's another approach, but it would require adding a good number of additional skills, both to make going the hybrid route seem worthwhile, and also to avoid stripping too many existing skills from single-skill requirements.

Another thing that can be done is consider the three primary skill attributes of: Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. And while dexterity is mildly useful on its own... each of them are pretty much useless except in the proper classes hands.

So we currently have ideas for Cross Class weapons, armor, and accessories.

So here is something else. Currently there is a Talent that gives you one additional attribute point.

Well... Why not expand on those specifically for cross classes?

Examples?
-Thoughtful Training (Talent): Req 10 Intelligence: Gain 2 Strength. Not Compatible with attribute boost
or alternatively
-Mage Knight (Talent): Req None: Gain 1 Strength and 1 Intelligence. Not compatible with attribute boost
Or there is also
-True Shadowblade (Talent): Req 3 Witchcraft, 3 Scoundrel: Gain 1 Int, 1 Two weapon Fighting

Or if that is a bit too much for you then there is:

-Bag of Tricks (Talent): Req Two opposing skills at rank 3: You gain a 10% bonus to skills with decreased potency, at level 10 this becomes 20%, up to the minimum.

I support that spells should have several classes as requirement to make hybrids more interesting.

So phoenix dive requires warrior AND fire skill.

Example for skill crafting:
Rain = low level water spell
Bleed = low level witchcraft spell
Rain + Bleed = Blood Rain and requires water AND witchcraft skill.

So in order to cast a combination of spells, you must be able to cast every spell that creates the combined spell.

While writing this I have an idea. I had to think about chrono trigger, where different chars can perform combo attacks. So what about this: The mage casts paralyze on the warriors sword and the warrior uses a charge attack to damage and paralyze all enemies in a line. This way the warrior can use a combined skill without putting skillpoints in air and you can use a different effect when you charge the next time (You could create a paralyze charge and poison charge by skill crafting, but your number of skills you can learn is limited and the char must be able to use every base ability to perform a combination of them).

- Fast weapon switching may be a talent (Like lone wolf, opportunist, . . . ) It may be useful for some chars and the disadvantage is that you cannot use a different talent instead.

- I am against weapons that can be used as normal melee weapon AND magic ranged weapon. Unless maybe very few unique items that have an important role in the story.

You can already use Staffs and wands as a regular weapon as it is.

Though my imagination doesn't stretch so far as to understand why, say, a sword enchanted to attack from afar would need to be a cosmic sword handed down from the gods. Especially since most items in the game are heavily magical as it is.

Or heck just a Staff that is essentially a large mace... why it would also need to be a legendary object.

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I should state that Hybrid weapons aren't restricted to just Mage + Physical archtypes. It is just that magical weapons are the easiest to think of without stretching your imagination.

A Two Handed Bastardsword that counts as a knife for the Scoundrel. That is a bit trickier to imagine.

Crossbow with a Bayonet easily fulfills a Scoundrel + Ranger.

Quick swap -
especialy after dual wield wepons, swap is intresting. I was used switch dagger for bow on my DEX characters often, but current mandatory dual wield daggers are too AP consuming.

Two weapon sets feature solves it.
For investing 2 skill points in the weapon section. (e.g. 1 point single handed + 1 point shield = weapon swap feature, 2nd level of two-handed = weapon swap feature)
Double slots for weapons, then switch it back and forth.
Weapon set switch for 2AP.
You can switch once per round.
Equiping one weapon from bag costs 4AP.

quick swap
A skill that reduces the equip cost would also be very appealing for the inquisitor class (dual wand users), because you can better adjust to the elemental resistances of your opponents.

melee weapons with ranged damage
I could see weapons that unlock some basic magic skills like Flare or make Staff of Magus compatible with all Tenebrium weapons.

Currently getting a few levels in another "class" is encouraged by the low amount of skill points that are required to learn their basic skills. With their 100% success chance I am putting Teleport + Thunder Jump on all my chars and Melee Power Stance + Helping Hands on the Mages, but the elemental damage / status effect success rate of other magic spells just suffers too much to be used by low int chars.