Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Alternative choices for racial skills

Villainous personality
Human- Passive: Deal 25% extra damage to all human characters
Natural camouflage
Elf- Active: When standing over grass surfaces apply a camouflage to yourself which causes enemies to ignore you (think stench but stronger)
Strength of the mountain
Dwarf - Active: Destroy all your physical armor and set crippled status dealing the total amount of armor as physical damage damage
Ancestors call
Lizard - Active: Set flying status which allows climb up or down terrain with ease slowing move-speed by 30%

Ok so..

1) That would make Humans not the greatest of choices as we will most likely run into far more monster species than human enemies.

2) That could possibly be extremely overpowered considering how many grass surfaces will be in the game and it would also make it completely worthless in any zone without grass.

3) That is a terrible trade off, armor is far too valuable to sacrifice for some damage.

4) They don't really have wings..not that kinda lizard, unless there is a weird species we don't know of, but the current racial ability isn't that great so I guess this one wouldn't be too bad to have considering our current choice.

All in all these don't seem properly thought out, but with tweaking they wouldn't be a bad addition if we could choose between a few racials per race, but they will probably leave them as is and only 1 racial ability per race and at most we will probably see a change of the lizard's dragon breath as it is extremely underwhelming compared to other abilities.

In D:OS and D:OS 2, there is no such thing as a passive skill. Skills must be activated (or at least toggleable on and off). If they are passive, they are Talents. So your suggestion for humans is not for a Skill but a Talent.


This isn't related to the OP's post, but I'm just going to repeat my dislike for Fire Breath:

Lizard's Fire Breath is bad because it can generally be replaced with dropping a candle out of your inventory and throwing it. It is also the ONLY Racial skill which requires points in a specific ability (Pyrokinetic) to be improved. It should be replaced with "Shed Skin", which removes all positive and negative status effects immediately, at the cost of a temporary (1-3 turn) small debuff to CON.

Fire Breath can stay in the game as a Pyrokinetic skill anyone can use.

1. I had troubles thinking of a balanced skill my second idea was an activatable spell with similar effects to bully from dos:ee but i like rogues so i tried to make something which appealed to me since the encourage is shitty for rogues
2. Well considering how strong the other elf racial is i had trouble coming up with something to contend with it
3. I made this one in consideration of the Execute talent using it to instagib 1 guy then move onto the next the numbers may have to be tweaked for it to be good
4. Grasping at straws tbh, i hate the current lizard talent stabbey's suggestions seems good though
Sorry they aren't very well thought out im a lay the foundation and built on it kinda guy i struggle coming up with full-fledged ideas.

Hope I didn't come off sounding like an asshole, didn't mean anything rude by what I posted.

There has been lots of suggestions to fix the Lizards racial ability and I think at this point we can look forward to a change as no one has posted really liking it honestly.

Elf is REALLY hard to think of something else because it is such a powerful ability no one would want something else. I mean you stick an Elf on Rogue or Ranger and dear god in heaven that shit is OP, you get Adrenaline, Haste and Flesh Sacrifice, oh and Rage can't forget about that one.

Encourage is bad for anything that isn't a meat wall tank or a support mage and I think them having two human companions and only 1 elf and 1 lizard is...not the greatest of choices cause you really only need 1 mage and like you said encourage is shit for anything else so its kinda wasted on Ifan or Lohse depending on what you make each.

I doubt we'll see that many more companions if any more, I could hope we'd get an Undead companion, but that is it sadly.

Oh right, Encourage. I think that Encourage's stat boost should scale up with level like Elf's CON penalty, and I think Encourage should also give a 15% heal to all allies within range.

speaking of companions there is no reason to pick the story ones vs make a custom one in most cases except the exp and some interactions. I like how they gave ifan a unique talent like drunadae addict but the rest of the companions are stuck with the defaults for that race. The current racial abilities make it hard to build them beyond a certain play-style since doing so is sub-par (i.e. elf = rogue/archer) which is part of the reason why i made this thread.

Some race already feel somewhat gimped for playing a role that doesn't use their bonus stat but 2 stat point is minimal at best that the only OP-looking one is Human free stat (2 wit, 3 % crit +2 from wit). Don't further gimp people for wanting to play races they want to play. I would like it a lot though if I can actually choose what bonus stat I want at the start because the extra int on Red prince as the primary warrior boy of the game (based on the banner and art) is just bleh.

But racial skills should just be just for a little "oomph" instead of a valid skill. Stuffs like Flame breath and Encourage are good examples of how racial skills should not make a certain race so much better than the other races that if you want to min-max, you have to play as them.

Meanwhile, Elven Racial, now that needs gutting to be on the same level as the other racial.

The main problems remains:
Encourage, Dragon breath and Petrifying Touch. Those where all basic skills in D:OS1. Encourage is even only the weak version from D:OS1. Flesh sacrifice is something new and makes elves even more special.

Same goes for the Traits. Elves get a special feature: corpse eating. Other races get a social point you perhaps will never need.

It just feels, like elves got far more love.

+2 points on any stat might be a lot at the beginning, but while in D&D it will be always a lot in D:OS2 on the long run it will be nothing. If you are level 20 those 2 points will be hardly felt anymore. Of course giving attributes more cross class versatility would help to make the start less painful.

Edit: Encourage is the same like Encourage in D:OS EE a bit stronger than from non-EE but still weaker than Inspire from non-EE.

It's okay to have a special racial skill but a free pass to being ridiculous is completely different. Something like "- X con for 3 turns, receieve +50% more healing for 3 turns" would have been better and still stick with the whole "Use flesh, eat flesh, regen flesh" type of theme they have. They already have some random unique flesh they can eat an infinite amount of time that grants them massive regen anyway, might as well make the skill synergize with that so they can try to create a "Regen tank" type of elven enemy in future arc that can be countered by using poison or just killing them with the reduced con before they heal.

And +2 stat might not look much but when you consider that going first or going last can be decided by simply a single point in wit, getting +2 wit is actually the strongest one around compared to int or finesse. Against human opponents, if both side spec in all wit, the human will always go first thanks to the extra wit and going first/second in the current state of the game can spell a victory or defeat. The extra stat part should really be something anyone can choose and the extra social skill are forced to go with their culture.

Pretty sure Encourage stats already scale with levels.
And adding a heal on top of it would be way too OP. Increasing constitution already provides some healing.

Pretty sure Encourage is like old Encourage, just giving +1 on 4 stats. Inspire at least increased all stats, so also speed and Perception. But with the current attribute system and the possibility of max-level 30, even Inspire would feel week in the long run. Instead of +1 it perhaps should give 10-15% boost (rounded down).

I do kinda agree with Kalrakah that the Elf's racial specials are much more unique and powerful than the ones for the other races. I suspect that Larian had a hard time coming up with unique and balanced bonuses for each race.




If Encourage already scales, then that part is no problem.

The heal I suggested is just 15%. As in 15 health for every 100 the player has. I don't think it would be OP given how hard enemies hit in this game. It would add strategic value - should you use Encourage at the start of combat for a buff, or save it for later when you might need healing. The idea is that the health heal represents a morale boost and encourages people to fight.

I will concende that perhaps the combination of scaled +CON and +15% might get to be a lot later game, so that would be a case for scaling the buff back somewhat.