Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Combat Abilities & Talents lvling up (Missing on)

After finishing Act1 which I've read was 25% of the game I was lvl7

So I could project that maximum lvl is somewhat in the 20-30s?

There are 17 different Combat Abilities and 33 different Talents

At lvl 7 which I am I have 8 Combat Abilities (mostly stack in the same tree (5-1-1 or 6-1) as I don't see a maximum) and 5 talents

You get 1 combat ability point per lvl and 1 every 4 level for talents...

For talents, if you do the math, at lvl28, end of the game where there wouldn't be anything to play for, you would get about 9 of those 33 talents.
Out of those 9, some are starting talents that you cannot change and Mnemonic seems a must so really you wouldn't be experiencing any other talents....

Maybe should this be lowered to 1 point every 3 lvl instead of 4

As for Combat Abilities, I tend to think right now that stacking 10 points into the same skill tree where I don't see an end and an evident boost... doesn't seem as reliable as spreading 1 points into every other skill tree to learn their magic.
Nevertheless, most points used would be in skill tree leaving the other combat abilities empty....

Maybe lvling up, you should get 1 point to put in the skill section and 1 point to place in either the combat or defense section...

The estimated soft cap for player level will be 30.

[s]9 out of 33[s/] 7 out of 33 sounds about right for Talents. The important thing to realize is that those Talents are not all going to be the best fit for every build. Those 33 Talents are spread out over a lot of different archtypes. And hopefully they will be adding in a lot MORE Talents too. So increasing the amount of Talents you can have won't be as useful as you think since there are only so many which work for an archtype. Plus a lot of Talents at the moment are mediocre and underwhelming.

Why would you want 1 point in 10 different abilities? You don't have the memory to hold all those skills and you don't have the weapons to use all the different trees. Additionally, I hope Larian will be increasing the requirements on higher power skills to need more points in the associated ability, because just 1 for the whole set is way too much flexibility.

EDIT: I just blindly went along without thinking about the math. It's 7 not 9.

Talent's I understand your point and it did cross my mind too. But like I said, If you get 9 at the end of the game, so during most of your play time, you might let's say play for an average 5-7 talents.... From those 7, you remove the basic 2 that you receive that can't be change so it becomes 5. Then like I said Mnemonic is a must so it becomes 4.... and if you didn't customize your talent at the beginning it becomes 3.... so really you get to chose about 3 talents ...from a list of about 30.... which feels like not enough..... every 3 lvl instead of 4 would give you the possibility to get 3 more...something that will round up your character's or give versatility...

*** So the solution to me is to give more points somehow. How many is up for discussion. Each 4 lvl you get 1 or 2 in rotation. Each 3 lvl ....whatever

As for Combat Abilities....

Because if you put 1 point in Huntsman, then you can have First Aid, if you put 1 point in Aeothurge, you can have Teleport, if you put 1 point in Polymorph, then you can get invisibility.... etc worth more than some lousy bonus from stacking point into the same skill tree......

It's not about having all the skills of all different skills tree, it's about choosing the best skill of each tree's and have them ready ...have your character flexible. This is what's the obvious.

*** The solution to give an alternative to spreading is buffing all magic within the same skill tree when adding more points within that tree, not just specific magic...we've discussed that before

Even if you decide to go all in on one skill tree like I've done with my character's, truthfully, why would you spend points into secondary useful skills when you can simply stack more points into the same main skill tree without feeling that there is a maximum points you can put in the same skill tree.

Let's say you want to be a Fighter or a Knight, why would you improve One-Hand or Two-Hand weapon when you can stack more points into Warfare....
Warfare is stacking damage to the armor, the other one is basic damage. A first look leads you to tend to say one or the other give a different bonus and there are equivalent, it depends of you.

Although when you think about it, Warfare remove the armor faster, then you can use your skills to CC the enemy. While putting points in two-hands prevents you to later decide to go with a shield and a one hand weapon....so it's too much of a drawback....therefor skill like those shouldn't be used...

Same goes for a Magic user, why would you want to improve your Wand damage when you can simply improve a magic tree....never going to be use.

Leadership, seem like a nice one, but nearby allies doesn't count you in, so it is situational, would you want to improve something situational or rather something concrete, yet here is another skill which will never get improve... well that unless all character's goes all in in Leadership and therefor lead you not to use the other skills...goes back to what i'm saying

*** Solution to me is having 2 points instead of one forcing you to pick one skill tree and one something else.... would lead you to chose something from the Offence, Defense category and improve one skill tree....

If the game becomes easier, make the game harder...but at least it open's the idea to use other options...

Furthermore, so far that I can tell, items can give you a great deal of bonuses regarding Combat Abilities. So then again it promotes the idea to be versatile and then use the bonuses from items to decide where to go with your character..... goes in the same direction as my complaints in the other thread about not having enough various range of items

I don't understand half of what you're talking about.

First of all, you choose 7 Talents throughout the game, and 1 Race, which comes with 2 fixed Racial Talents. The Racial Talents do not count for or against the 7 Talents you have a choice to pick.

Mnemonic is a good one, but it's not always a priority. It's something which for many Archtypes, can wait until the more playstyle-changing Talents are chosen. Arguably it's not necessary at all. That will depend on a lot of things we can't know with only Act 1 available.




Wait, now you're including the one at character creation again? You're not making any sense. How can you not pick a Talent in character creation? And why wouldn't you pick one? There are enough decent ones so that there should be something.

Of the 7 Talent points which you can spend, you get to pick SEVEN (7) of them. That is what Talent choice MEANS. At worst, you are arguing that we only get to pick six with Mnemonic being the 7th.

The game does need a lot more good Talents so that there can be a large variety of builds. Right now there are indeed not enough good Talents to produce a viable diversity by level 28. People will converge on the good ones. That is something Larian seriously needs to work on fixing.




OR, you could, you know, ROLEPLAY in this ROLEPLAYING GAME, and build your characters to be good in a specific area instead of making them all generic min-max stat muchkins. Just a thought.

"Roleplay in a roleplaying game" is just a sad invalid argument....
D&D roleplay that you're referring to follows a certain logic, there is always a reason behind the functionality of the game and the way you improve your character ....of course you can choose not to be specialized in anything but in the end you'll be penalized....for instance you cannot wear plate armor otherwise your magic will be weaker....etc which ensure a certain fairness among characters in the game....

This is a different game with a different concept...where specific races can eat body parts.....where your armor is giving you extra "health" instead of mitigating damage...
Nevertheless, that game must have a logical aspect for it's functionality....

and right now I am challenging a small part of it to the benefice of the game....open your mind to other people thoughts.....

Why do you improve in a specific area, it's because it is beneficial...
As a grown up you find your way in life, and who knows where it will lead you, but when you specialize into something, it open's doors to bigger opportunity as oppose of learning various aspect of life but to a smaller degree which open's other door,....so they are both viable but specializing is usually the better one of the two for obvious reason....bigger salary....generally speaking...

To be objective here is being able to see what's the good and consequently the bad of each side of the coin. You realize quickly though, that if I had to do this over, I would spread more points into more skill tree because it is much much stronger to have the best skills in the game ready for usage as oppose of doing an additional minimal amount of damage or health/armor gain....

If all my character's had teleport, frost armor, restoration, the group healing, earth armor and first aid....wow...you would have to double the amount of enemies to make this a challenge for any encounter's.........regardless of my characters purpose in the fight...

So this is why putting more points into a skill tree needs a bigger bonus than what it is....make lvlup do more damage....heal more....unlock specific cure for a skill...in the worse, start making those skills requiring lvl1-2-3-4 of a skill tree to be learned...

But in the end, by suggesting people to invest in the same skill tree (where you agree for sake of roleplaying), comes down to the other point I was suggesting earlier;

the Offensive and Defensive section wouldn't be use, therefor a suggestion of 2 points per lvl, 1 for the skill trees and 1 either for the offense or defense section...to ensure that people may use the options at their disposal... It would make much more sens...

I played the game with 4 character's
Max Warfare with 1 point into Polymorph
Max dual weapon with 1 point into Rogue and Necromancy
Max Pyrotechnic with 1 point into Geomancer
Max Water magic with 1 point into Air and Summoning

Then on my last lvl, 3 of them learned Huntsman just for First Aid
Truthfully I should have started that long before...
Everybody get Water (frost armor, restoration, group healing), Air (teleport, swap, stunt), Huntsman (first aid), Pyrotechnic (earth armor, clear mind, haste), Polymorph (invisibility), Rogue (teleport) have all those skills learned and ready and then have them specialize the remaining few points into the same thing as before, my group party would do a little bit less damage but would be much much much stronger in defense and survivability...actually with this they could all do close combat and wear plate armor....and just like that an unspecialized bunch would so much more powerful than anything specialized...


As for the talents, yes I was including the talent you start with.
Anyway, if I follow your stand point that you have 7 talents at lvl 28 or 6 really because we can both agree on the fact that mnemonic will be taken sooner or later for good reason, you also have to understand that at lvl 28, you're at the end of the game....so the 7th talent, you're not really going to play with... which lead me to say that for the general part of the game you would have an average of 3 talent's that you would have chosen and be playing with...
6 divide by 2...for equal playtime....

On the other end, if after 10 lvl, I already have my 7 talents + my starting talent etc....this would mean I would play a big part of the game with a good amount of talent which would round up my character....so that would be fine too...

What i'm complaining there is the fact that most of my play time, I wouldn't really be using those talents.... look right now, i'm lvl7 and I've completed 25% of the game. I had my starting talent point where I left as is, and I had to chose once one talent point when I got to lvl 5 I think....all characters got mnemonic and that's it, I haven't use anything else yet....and 25% of the game is completed...and you're telling me that you want more talents?! what for.... (I'm being sarcastic there as yes more talents to build a synergy between them is good but what i'm saying is building your synergy will take forever...)

You have to understand, i'm not going to pick something for the sake of "roleplaying" my character, I am going to pick something because it is beneficial to my character so the game must give me more beneficial options at my disposal for me to pond my options on what I should be taking.....right now it's not the case...

In the end game you probably won't be able to learn every skill with only one point invested. This is probably only possible now, because it is done this way for testing purpose.

I did not agree with you that Mnemonic WILL be taken sooner or later. That will depend on a lot of things. Don't put words in my mouth.

No, I won't eliminate the level 28 Talent as being irrelevant. It will be a lower priority, but still useful. That's why you spend it. If there's nothing appealing to spend it on, you won't take it and leave the Talent point unspent.

You are not making any sense with your "average of 3 Talents" stuff. You will have 3 Talents by level 8, the end of Fort Joy, which is 25% of the game by Map and slightly more than 25% of the game considering maximum player level. That's close to 75% of the game with 3 Talents or more.




Really? Why stop there? I mean if you start out on the beach with all 7 Talent points, you can play 100% of the game with all your chosen Talents. By your logic, that should be better, right?

The worth of Talents is NOT based purely on the amount of time your character gets to use them. Talents are about specializing your character in certain areas. The worth of a Talent is "what would be most helpful to my build RIGHT NOW". It's about priorities. A "Level 28" Talent to your build might be another build's "Level 4" Talent.




I took Mnemonic once at level 1. That was silly since I couldn't afford the extra Skills that early anyway. If you are so interested in min-maxing your amount of skills that Mnemonic is a must-have at level 4, that's your problem, not a problem with the game. You want to use different Talents? Then. Pick. Different. Talents.

The game needs more Talents, yes, but there are not so few decent ones that at level 4 I throw up my hands and go "the only good one is Mnemonic". There are a lot of Talents which can provide very useful boosts and help, and are more interesting than +3 Memory.




I am also picking things which are beneficial to my character. Your mistake is assuming that picking things beneficial to your character and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. They are not.

I though I've read you agreed on Mnemonic implicitly, my bad. Anyway, what I'm argument is most of your play time, you'll be playing without enough talents.

You said that we had to choose 7 talents. Divide this by 2 and you get 3.5 ....lets say 4 instead. Then at the half point of the game you have 4 out of 30 (maybe 40 when it is done) available talents. To me, it feels low... I'm not arguing to get 10 out of 40 at half point in the game but if you would get 10 out of 40, it would mean 5 toward 6 at half point in the game. I'm arguing that if we had 2-3 more down the road, it would feel better as for character personalization.

No Mnemonic isn't the only one but at first look, I agree that it may feels like it. I've played also with a Cleric using that talent healing himself standing in blood, very nice. A Zombie Witch is cool too. There are always some talents here and there making your character more valuable for choosing such a talent.

Yes Kalrakh, if upon release the skills set are changed for an appropriate level requirement, then I'm fine with this. Gotta keep in mind that this is an "Alpha" version ......a very functional Alpha compare to other game's Alpha version ^^...

So this is my feedback toward what I had in my hand, they will most likely disregard it if they feel that requirement are already projected in the final version of the game...

Although, on a personal though, the starting skills could hardly be change so far as you start with those in character's creation....becomes difficult to decide later to change skills requirement for more than 1 point in a skill tree...
What can happen is tweaking the skills for every point in a skill tree...
For instance, if Backstab requires you to be standing within 2 feets from the target at lvl 1 and increase distance as you lvl up your skill tree....this is some form of ways to build around the basic skills.....every basic skills...

Like said before, if you ensure that people need to lvlup their skill tree to influence character specialization over spreading 1 point into each skill tree to unlock the basic skills to use the better one of each, it also influence that no points will be put into Combat and Defense.
Therefor influence the possibility of separating the Skill Trees from the Combat and Defense and allowing 1 point in each when lvling up

In DOS1 we had 5 steps for skill tree, with increasing costs: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5, so getting to the final Tier would have cost you 15 points in total. Every Tier limited how many skills from each Tier you could learn, I think there were 3 Tiers, not sure. (On higher level you got more skills points per level, which does not seem to be the case here.)

In DOS2 there are 10 points max planned I think, not sure how many Tiers are planned tough and if the highest Tier will need a maxed out tree.

Any way, still hoping Skilltrees will get more divers adds than only those little mindless damage increases.

Like OP I tend to put a single point in many skill trees. And as mentioned that doesn't mean getting every skill but getting one or 2 skills in several trees.



Except 'tac. retreat' instead of 'clk/dggr' and maybe add 'adrenaline'. Also 'wings' is great and 'shedskin' (removes cool downs) is fantastic. Also 'earth armor/fortify' is not under pyro, but geo.

BTW I give everyone warfare for rage and so they can get the best talent WARLORD. I also like 'glass cannon' on ranged folks and possibly 'hothead' or 'mnemonic' for melee guys. Basically have one point is all skill trees except witch which sucks ATM and only one summoner.

I like how DOS2 only requires one point per skill level. And they probably will/should require higher levels in skill points to access same level of skill, for instance level 2 fireball requires level 2 pyro. But hopefully keep the anti-CC/debuff skills at level 1 so multiple players can help each other.

AngeliusMefyrx, we seem to have completely different views on the worth of Talents. You seem to think that the worth of Talents is ONLY, ONLY the amount of time the player gets to use them, and so you have come to the absurdly bizarre conclusion that players only get to enjoy 3 Talents.

My view, which you completely ignored, is that the worth of Talents is "what is right for my build RIGHT NOW". If a Talent would improve my build, it is absolutely worthwhile, regardless of whether I take it at level 4, level 16, or level 28. The dilemma is not about how much of the game will be left to use the Talent, it is about prioritizing which Talent is most helpful to the build right now, and which one can wait. (This is why I hate the Back-stabber Talent Tax, because it's basically the only answer for a Rogue in character creation.)

That is the reason why you get the Talents spread out over the game and not all at level 1. To force you to prioritize.

Stabbey, it is like you said, we have a disagreement over the use of talents.
"My view, which you completely ignored"
I understand what you're saying, I disagree with it, can you understand that now...
It is not because you're saying it that I must agree with it

To me talent's are to be used, and I didn't want to go into details of explaining it but since you want to talk about it and truthfully, you've already venture yourself into it

When you're in character creation, it is like you said, 2 talents are locked from your race and 1 talent is allowed to be change but truthfully, most of the character classes are kind of lock for simple reason as they are a must. Rogue with their backstabbing talent, magic user with the talent that increase 2m range.

It is good that these are talents because the game allows versatility across the board and those little talent that are kind of a must for most classes enforce that they have an advantage over another class that doesn't have the talent unlocked...

So these talents to me counts as 0. You've chosen 0 talents.

I think right now the list of talents is at 33 -3 basic talents so 30....
So you start at 0 out of 30; and even worse, if you're right and they increase the number of talents, then increase that number of 30.

To me Mnemonic is a must a lvl 4 which I've taken, so I really didn't explore additional talents after 25% of the game completed.

So you've said every 4 lvl and 28 lvls total which lead to 7 talent's
Well, I've picked 1 after 25% of the game.
Anyway, if you understand that you get 0 at lvl1 and 7 at lvl 28 which is somewhat close to the maximum, an average becomes 3.5 (divided by 2 which isn't exact but will keep it simple) .... so you get to play with an average of 3.5 talent chosen....so a little bit after the half point of the game you'll be going for a 4th talent out of a list of 30+ something...
That feels little....

To me, when there are options in a game, features, classes, talents, whatever that is, I think a good game allows you to profit from those... maybe you could argue that 4 character's have a total of 28 out of those 30 talents if you play all 4 and give them different talents to each one of them....but I could argue that the list is about to expand too...

So anyway, this is my point, the fact that at lvl7 I've completed 25% and really chosen 1 talent....maybe if they would reverse that giving you 1 talent at lvl2 and then increasing each 4 lvl or an additional talent at the beginning making it 4.....or giving you 1 talent every 3 lvls at the beginning but changing it to 4 later one, that would end up giving you one additional talent at the end and you would get them sooner, it would be maybe even better than what I've suggested (each 3 lvl)....

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My main attraction here is mostly the Skills tree, the Offense and Defense that needs a bigger change.... but I felt like adding talents to the list as I would like a small improvement there too...

To me the Skill tree needs to be apart from the Offense and Defense attributes. Level those separately so most likely get 1 point in the skill tree and 1 for the offense/defense when leveling up. Or maybe 1 every 2 lvl for the last group.

Have the skills in those skill tree evolve from lvling up the same skill tree. Make those skill that are already existing weaker if need be. Let's say backstab you can only teleport 2 feet's from target, the more points in Scoundrel, the better the distance until it reach a maximum where you could even go on and say that you can use your skill through a cloud.

This will ensure a distinct advantage of specializing yourself into a skill tree versus versatility of putting 1 point in everyone of them and picking the best skills....

Dividing the skill tree from the offensive/defensive group will ensure that the suggestion of increasing your skill tree for better skills doesn't render obsolete the offensive/defensive group as everybody would feel enforce to put their point somewhere else...

Having 1 point in Offensive/Defensive when leveling up, would allow people to question themselves about increasing damage through specific types of weapon, or use leadership or any other attributes making them an option to think about....

I think a lot of this disagreement is fundamentally from your (Angelius's) opinion on the power of certain specific talents (Mnemonic and Far Out Man in particular). Neither talent is particularly amazing in my book. They're solid, but not the overwhelmingly mandatory choices. The only mandatory talent for any build is backstabber for rogues, which we all agree should go.

The game is not so hard that you cannot pick certain talents that will simply be fun, while still being fairly useful. Say, you get Warlord on a mage instead of Far Out Man. Far Out Man will provide constant benefits, while Warlord will provide power swings. Even something like Savage Sortliege could compete with Far Out Man if you use rage. Far Out Man and Mnemonic are good, safe talents to choose if you don't know what else you want, nothing more.

Racial Talents do not count for or against other Talents.

Can we at least agree that there needs to be MORE worthwhile talents. The more worthwhile Talents there are, then there isn't one clear "must have" Talent. Right now, mages have almost NO Talents specifically aimed for the mage archtype, which is an appalling oversight considering that magic occupies 7 out of 10 skill sets.

I've suggested several Talents which require reaching Level 5 in a skill school, which also provides incentive for specializing in specific skill schools instead of spreading out all over.

Additionally, if Ability requirements for certain tiers of skills are added, that also increases incentive to specialize.

If Back-stabber is removed as a Talent, and made a property of daggers, then Rogues have several different possible options, depending on what you want your build do to and all are valid choices, without any specific "must haves". That's a good reason to remove Back-stabber.




It's 3 Attribute points earmarked specifically for Memory. By level 4 you can easily allocate 3 Attribute points to Memory on everyone and pick something else. If you already are spending extra points onto Memory and don't want to spend even more to boost your other Attributes, that's a decision you have made. It is not a flaw in the game that you have never even tried another Talent. That's your own lack of imagination and unwillingness to to try different things.

I specifically try to avoid Talents which are just "you get an extra point oh boy", because they have little impact compared to ones which actually change how your character plays.




I am never going to understand that, because you are using math in a situation which math is not relevant. But we are not going to agree and I have said my piece, so I'm not going to continue arguing.

Yes, we can agree that more talents needs to be made available for different synergy with your character, I've never denied that, I knew some people posted that request with example of additional talents in other thread....most likely you but I do agree on that...

The talent for back-stabbing, I don't know, to me teleport is the best talent in the game in combat for it's ability to change a combat, but damage orientated, back-stabbing is far ahead than anything else. By removing it as a talent, it opens the door for anybody to learn lvl1 Scoundrel and then backstabbing.....anyway that's how the game has been made so far, get all the skill available for the exchange of a point into the proper skill tree, but also my suggestion to change the strength of skills could cover that

Like I said earlier, I've explored other talents than mnemonic in different games other than my own or my main story game as I'd prefer to use my attributes points to buff my WIT/CON/(INT/STR/FIN) and use Mnemonic to get those "3 points" into MEM...

Your never going to understand my math?, ok lets make it simpler
(lvl1-3) = 0 talent - meaning you'll be playing with x additional talent for the duration of 3 levels
(lvl4-7) = 1 talent - meaning you'll be playing with x additional talent for the duration of 4 levels
(lvl8-11) = 2 talents - idem
(lvl12-15) = 3 talents - idem
(lvl16-19) = 4 talents - idem
(lvl20-23) = 5 talents - idem
(lvl24-27) = 6 talents - idem
(lvl28-30) = 7 talents - meaning you'll be playing with x additional talent for the duration of 3 levels

0*3 + 1*4 + 2*4 + 3*4 + 4*4 + 5*4 + 6*4 + 7*3 = 105 / 30 levels = 3.5 precisely
So this is your average talents during game time (assuming that each level takes as long to level up than the other)

It is possible Baardvark.
When there is too many possibilities, you'll usually tend to start making groups, the talents that are a necessity, the talents that are good enough to be played with and then talents that are good for specific built....

There are plenty of fun talents to be played with too. Resurrect with 10%, when resurrected get 100% health, poison healing you for the witch, blood healing you, there is a boost toward warfare, backstabbing, far out man, etc
There is a lot of nice talents, I don't remember all of them as I'm not in the game at the moment...

But so far, when you start the game, you try to learn the new available magic from the 1 or 2 trees you've started with. You can't put all your points into MEM as you needs to get your Wits from 12 to eventually 15-17 at lvl 7, some CON and some in your main stats too as it increase your damage. So the work around is to go Mnemonic and get an additional 3 slots for spells....

Anyway, enough about the talents, which is really something minor to me

What about the skill suggestion? let me repost this suggestion which is the main topic that I wanted this post to be about but it turned out otherwise...is it because people agrees about this suggestion....:

To me the Skill tree needs to be apart from the Offense and Defense attributes. Level those separately so most likely get 1 point in the skill tree and 1 for the offense/defense when leveling up. Or maybe 1 every 2 lvl for the last group.

Have the skills in those skill tree evolve from lvling up the same skill tree. Make those skill that are already existing weaker if need be.
Let's say backstab you can only teleport 2 feet's from target, the more points in Scoundrel, the better the distance until it reach a maximum where you could even go on and say that you can use your skill through a cloud.
If 10 is the maximum lvl in a skill tree, it doesn't need to increase 10 time, it may stop increasing the skill after 5 upgrades. Let's says +2 feet, +2 feet, +2 feet, +2 feet, Backstab teleport unaffected by cloud.

This will ensure a distinct advantage of specializing yourself into a skill tree versus versatility of putting 1 point in everyone of them and picking the best skills....

Dividing the skill tree from the offensive/defensive group will ensure that the suggestion of increasing your skill tree for better skills doesn't render obsolete the offensive/defensive group as everybody would feel enforce to put their point somewhere else...

Having 1 point in Offensive/Defensive when leveling up, would allow people to question themselves about increasing damage through specific types of weapon, or use leadership or any other attributes making them an option to think about....

Have you tried playing differently? Have you tried putting points into those other things to see what it's like? I promise you it's not "obsolete", and personally I think if we want to give incentives for more specialization, those should exist as well designed talents that reward the sacrifices of different play styles.

For example, I just finished a solo run (no companions) as a Dual-Wielding Dwarven Polymorph. It was one of the most fun of the eight I've done. Of course, it would have been much harder without the Restoration ring and the Teleportation gloves, but it didn't take me any longer than any of my other runs, which usually take about 6-8 hours (not even frenetically). Even then, with grenades, food and potions, not having Restoration shouldn't be an issue. Furthermore, that was a SOLO run. Solo runs are made possible mainly by the sneak mechanic, or invisibility skills (and shed skin).

Now, imagine a FULL PARTY. Do you really need 4 characters with 1 point into each school? There are many combinations that are not obsolete. A party with a specialist of each kind or maybe with only a couple of hybrids could be even better than a party with 4 hybrids.

Your solution doesn't affect the fundamental problems with the Combat Abilities as they stand. The problems are very particular to the Abilities. This has been discussed plenty in other threads. It is generally thought that the Defence abilities are relatively weak, and abilities that involve critical chance and dodge seem under-powered early game. Giving "more points" doesn't solve that.

Teleport is not a Talent, but a Skill (I'm a bit anal about using the proper terminology.)

My proposal is NOT to tie Backstabbing to Scoundrel at all, rather it is to tie Back-stabbing to the daggers and knives directly (in exchange for lower base damage on those weapons). And yes, that will absolutely, 100% make anyone able to back-stab if they equip daggers and knives. I think that is fine.

I am surprised that you, who complains about there not being enough good Talents to the point where you say you are forced into picking only one possible Talent, is complaining about the idea of removing basically the ONLY Talent where "only one possible Talent" is actually the case.

You also promote the virtues of putting one point into all the skill trees and are complaining that people might put a point into Scoundrel for the ability to back-stab?



You have chosen to use your attribute points to spend on boosting your other stats instead of MEM. That's fine, but it is your choice to do that, and your choice to do that and always pick the +Memory Talent instead of the others colors your view that you need more Talent points, but that is a reflection on your insistence on doing the same build for all your characters. You also think we get to few Talents because we only have a small part of the game available and can only reach level 7 or just barely level 8 in the alpha and that's it. If you could level up to 30 and had the whole game, the Talent situation would look different.


You think it is a flaw in the game, but I think it is more of a flaw in your approach to playing.




Do not fucking insinuate that I am just too fucking stupid to understand your glorious math. I understand math just fine.

I just reject your way of using it. You also have confused your opinion about there being 0 Talents from level 1-3 as some kind of unassailable objective fact. It is not. It is an opinion, and a... willfully blind one at that.

Your "average time spent with Talents" math to judge the worth of Talents is absurd. It's like trying to analyze the meaning of a painting by calculating how much paint of each colour was used. Sure, you can get a result of the amount of paint, but that tells you nothing useful about the painting.

You refused to acknowledge the existence of my argument, so I will do the same for your math.




Thinking about it, your idea seems more flawed than the current approach.

Mages will find many places to spend the one point in the Skills, but what will they do with the new, free point in Offense/Defense? It won't be much use in the Offense category since mages should almost never be using their regular attack. So it'll go into the Defense tree, meaning that they get free points into Leadership or Pain Reflection or Perserverance that they would not have from the current build.

Physical attackers will focus their new Skill-only points mostly on one of the Skill schools, maxing out one of them much faster than the mages will level up their 2-3 Skill schools. However, they will have to spend their Offense/Defense points on both their weapon skills and the defensive ones. That means that the ones who will have the most points in defense will be the mages who are at the back and will have little use for it.

That seems very backwards.