Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Skills, some attributes, resistances and stuff

Ive written this in previous posts but i feel like making it more clear and concise will make it more understandable.

I havent tried the new version yet, but it doesnt seem to bring any specific benefits or much difference to anything so my suggestions are not affected by it.

I think what i suggest is theoretically doable in the game as it is, with relatively acceptable effort and work needed, although of course i have no fantasies about it being accepted and implemented.

trying to keep it short;

Skills

Should get more skill slots the more you invest in them. This would remove memory attribute completely and do it in a way that is very easily understandable to any kind of player.

The more you invest in a skill the more resistance against that type of damage or that specific type of magic you get. Because you know that skill better so you should be able to defend against it in better ways.
This can be limited so some items that provide similar protection keep their value (although that should be then nerfed) and mechanics. Balance exact amounts as needed.

If you invest in magic skills, this could also give you a small boost to general magic armor, so you dont need to remove that mechanic. (in addition to any gained from items that should be nerfed to balance this out).
In addition to specific resistances against that type of magic and elemental damage from it.

If you invest in fighting, this should also increase physical armor. But it should give greatest benefits to directly related defense against those specific types of skills.
So either damage resistance for tank fighters, or increase in dodge for dexterous rogue or marksman builds.

All of this would also work for the enemies too.
So in terms of gameplay, if you need to defend against a rogue - you send your rogue to do it. If you need to damage the enemy rogue you send a fighter/tank to do it. Or a wizard.
It makes automatic natural sense to everyone (i hope).
- This does not mean you cannot use a fighter against a fighter, rogue against a rogue or wizard against a wizard. -



Lockpicking and bashing,

Bashing containers destroys small and sensitive-weak objects-items.
Lowers durability or quality of bigger items. (weapons, armors)
Which makes crafting-repair a necessity as a trade off.
Which is only logical, right?

Lockpicking gets you all items inside containers undamaged - therefore it has its own value, yet it does not force every character build, or a party to have lockpicking, if implemented in this way.

Bashing should be dependent on strength - the more strength you have the faster you bash and smash, but the bigger the strength is, the more damage it causes as described previously.

For balance, bashing containers with magic should cause greatest damage to the items inside, otherwise wizards would be OP in this sense, which ruins rogues specialty.

Finesse should lower the damage you cause to items by bashing containers but shouldn't remove it completely. (maybe) So a rogue without locpicking would be able to bash containers, get more out of it because of finesse but it would take much longer due to low strength.

Finesse should not affect using magic to bash containers.


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I would also make Inteligence have additional positive effect on level limitations for items and magic, so the higher the intelligence is - the sooner and better you can learn higher level magic, or get to use higher level items-weapons to their full potential.

Seems like a balanced tradeoff for investing a lot of points into it at expense of other attributes. Both for fighter, wizard and hybrid builds.


Devs know the exact numbers and equations far better then me so ill leave those details to them. Or other experts in that field.

Generally speaking, those systems look like pretty simple and reasonable ideas.

The various systems about chest-bashing would need to be explained to the end-user, though, as the nuances would not be particularly obvious. It's probably a little too complicated for an one-off in-game tutorial, but keeping that information in a tutorials section of the log might work.

I do not like the idea of tying additional positive effects to Intelligence, though. Especially in a system in which without Memory, once again Mages have less need to split attributes away from their primary attribute than other class archtypes. It's also a strange idea to have INT affect items, as mages are much less reliant on items than physical attackers.

The simpler the better, i think. For all the obvious reasons. Easier to understand and potentially implement.

I dont think there would be any big problems in explaining the chest-bashing stuff to the players. Either in separate tutorial if there will be one, or through first few encounters with containers, through character dialogue and expanded descriptions of attributes in the character sheet.

But mostly because it would simply make sense to most people. If you burn a chest would you be surprised some items inside got destroyed?
- I think some items do get destroyed in the OS when you open chests by bashing or magic?
I would just add a few general "broken", "damaged" or "destroyed" icons to represent that better visually. It can be as simple as a red X across an item icon, or something similarly simple and clear for damaged stuff.


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The additional benefits of intelligence were meant to be small and gradual, so it doesnt create too big of an advantage. It could lower AP penalties, one by one point, or allow you to learn one level higher magic when you reach a certain amount. Then two levels higher magic when you reach some specific higher amount. Mages do use items. Spell books, wands, armor, etc.

And this mechanic would also give something reasonably valuable to hybrid builds.
You could have an intelligent warrior, and get something palpable out of it. For example.
But it should never be done in a way where it becomes too big of a benefit. Instead it should give small gradual benefits, and a few slightly bigger ones at specific thresholds.

Maybe a few other attributes could also get some small additional benefits to become more attractive to mages.
Constitution is usually a dump stat for all builds, something could be added there.
- small increase in magic or physical armor, maybe?
- some additional talents higher Con would open that would be mage specific?
And certainly some dexterity is useful for a mage.


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- hmm, also, maybe making higher strength damage items inside containers even more is unnecessary penalty (and unnecessary work for devs) in this specific kind of a game. So, you would destroy or partly damage some items by bashing but higher strength would only make you able to bash higher level chests, or doors - faster.

- Additionally, i of course agree with everyone that think repair items and such should not be destroyed in the process of using those skills. Same for lockpicks.
But that can be changed into - lower skills destroys some of those items, - higher skills preserves those items.

- Crafting and repair... i think it would be nice if repairing damaged items would demand you have some basic materials for it too, so repairing armor or weapons would require some scrap metal or similar, repairing magic items would require... gems, pixie dust, or similar.

Just had a thought ... what if memory gets to influence the cap or overall limit of all used skill slots, similarly how Constitution caps the overall amount of AP points in OS?

Then you dont need to remove it completely, investing in skills would be as i suggest the main way how you get more skill slots in that specific skill, but memory would still have some value.