Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Character building options

I would suggest that we should decide freely where to put the first three Ability points. Instead of having them separated into two combat ability points and one civil ability point.

So we can choose to put all three points anyway we like.

I would also prefer that retribution is not a defense skill, or character ability at all, but equipment or magic feature.

Civil abilities are not that valuable or attractive for some builds.

As a build focused on fighting i dont see much need for most of civil abilities. Only persuasion seem valuable, or even necessary as its the main character while the rest are better combined and more fitting for other builds.

Lucky charm maybe, just to make it easy on myself for looting.


Shame telekinesis is not enhanced to be able to do more in the game. That kind of ability has a lot of potential, both in offense and defense, thievery and interacting with environment.

Hunter could use something more then just bonus to high ground damage too.


- It would be very nice if the main attributes were showing to which type of weapons they contribute so the players can adjust the stats for their preferred style of fighting right away.

- It would be very nice if we could make a build then save that preset so its easier to make other future builds with it and adjust it without repeating the whole process all over again.

I would like to be able to fully respec Companions when I hire them. I wanted to make a gimmick 4-Summoner run, but that gives me 3 "Pet Pal" Talents.

I definitely agree that Telekinesis is underwhelming. I should be able to open doors and chests from a distance, and other things too. Only picking up items is not really worth a civil point. I guess I can move barrels, but that's really not all that much.

Ive played some more and since we can find items that boost civil skills which function very well just with a point or two in them, there really is no ingame need to force the players to spend points there.
Defensive skills are also not that enticing... but i dont see what could be added in a system like this.

Yeah, it would be nice if we could change the talents and skills of companions since its easy to get duplicates and some more fun builds are not available.

Ive tried using telekinesis to fight, but its kind of awkward because you can just move some item close to the enemy which damages them, but the damage is not that big. I doubt devs would do all that work now, but it would be a cool skill if it was enhanced.

It could be used to steal stuff without coming close to NPCs, could have defensive uses, disarming like the tentacle lash does, all kinds of offensive throwing, etc. It would be fun to win the game by furniture - which other game could boast with that achievement, eh? High level chair throwing. or at very high level you could pick up enemies and throw them at each other or similar. So you dont have to rely on teleporting.

There is lots of possibilities. Right now you do need it to get a few treasure chest, if you dont have any teleporting or jumping skill.



- If some dev sees this, there are two other small features you could add easily to make some things much smoother.

When looting, if all characters are chained together, allow me to change who is looting so that the character i click on takes the loot, even if i opened a container with another one.
That would solve most of complaints about having to use one dedicated lucky charm build for looting.

Similarly if all characters are chained together make all of them go into stealth mode if i click the stealth button. So we dont have to go in and out of stealth with each character separately.

Im noticing there are no second tier spells... was that removed or am i missing something?

Im playing hybrid builds, and most are triple hybrids so the highest score in one "magic" is 3 points and we are all low on intelligence, highest at 15. (at lvl 6 currently) Same with memory. Highest at 16 and the rest few points bellow. Is that it or spell tiers are gone?

I dont see any higher tier spells sold by traders, or marked as such either. It seems all the spells and abilities are available and not tiered anymore. Not that im complaining, just asking.
Last version i played before this last one had spells and skills levels or tiers.


Also, biggest damage increases i have are from main attributes, while combat abilities give smaller additions to it. Not that its some bad thing overall, the game plays well. All this fits very well with my preferred hybrid builds.

Its just that generally there is not much incentive to invest in spells and skills, or combat abilities.
Which seems weird. And it all could be even better.

Its all due to the magic/physical armor system. That influences all other mechanics.

I still think the combat gameplay would be better if these armor barriers would behave less crudely, and be percentage based, no matter what final form it takes. And if the CC effects would be a bit softer instead of hard.
That would make it easier to add some additional different benefits to combat abilities and spell skills.

Magic schools could give a small resistance to that type of magic and damage. Physical abilities could add some resistance to those abilities and damage. Plus the influence on raw damage could be balanced more between combat abilities and main attributes. As well as critical chances, or any other smaller effect.

Hell yes with the respec.

I think one thing that could make Telekinesis more useful, is to allow the player to pick up an enemy or barrel and throw them/it for physical damage. Of course, the main function of doing this is not to do damage, but could be used to put distance between you and the enemy, or to throw an oil barrel, or a similar barrel, at a surface with enemies. Some enemies would be too heavy, and the more points you have in telekinesis, the heavier the object or enemy you can pick up. Weight of enemies and very weak damage would be the two things that would balance this feature.

I agree that the civil abilities aren't very attractive. I would never pick a civil ability over a combat ability. This is exactly why I like the separation of Combat and Civil points.
When a game makes me pick between useful stats and frills, I avoid the frills (e.g. Pet Pal). The separation on Civil/Combat allows you to enjoy the frills without weakening your build, which I like.

I feel the real issue here is that the Civil abilities should feel more appealing.

My opinion on the civil skills:

Bartering can be effective if a team has 1 guy stacking Bartering who does all of the buying and selling, but organizing this to full effect in multiplayer is a real micro-managing pain.

Telekinesis can sometimes let you reach an item in a bit more convenient manner and lift heavier things (E.g. Finess/Int class lifting heavier paintings), which is nice I guess but never feels essential. Parties always have Teleport from gloves so any really clutch out-of-range items can always be pulled with that, making Telekinesis have very little use.

Sneak is a great skill if you plan to use it, but certainly not necessary. Useful for melee characters who want to get first-attacks. Could be useful for skipping fights too.

Thievery - the merger of lockpicking and pickpocketing - is actually a great skill.
It's very efficient for pick-pocketing the best items off of each new NPC you encounter, and having multiple people with it doubles the amount of value you can take. With 1 or 2 high-level thieves your party never has cash troubles. Although, the return diminishes as vendors run out of useful goods, but you can have 1 thief hold off until the inventory refresh.
The lockpicking portion is nice, I guess, but one can usually just break open chests. There's only occasionally one you cannot.
This one does have a tendency to get people caught-in-the-act with an irritating fight on our hands afterwards though.

Lucky Charm doesn't feel like it's working. I see the shamrock but then there's nothing of apparent value in the container.
This is an irritating one for a party too as 1 player stacking it will want to open every chest but the rest of the party will want to open things too.

Loremaster is an okay 1-pointer for identifying new drops when not in town.
I've never noticed any additional information gained on enemy NPCs from it. I usually just find 1 or 2 different pieces of gear for Loremaster to get the full effect and just never bother with actual point investments.
Useless for more than 1 person to have this.

Persuasion, I haven't used much, but theoretically is convenient when you get caught performing a crime and can just talk your way out of it. I imagine for mistakes and quest/story convenience this is nice, but like every other civil ability it feels non-essential.

I would allow picking up, moving or throwing enemies only as a maximum you can get out of that ability. But general design of mechanics of the game dont seem to be going in that direction, so its all a moot point.

Ive managed to figure out abilities or spell tiers as i played more.
Now the source spells take the "second tier". Its just that a lot of them are usual spells from the previous game, which have now been changed into source abilities, which doesnt look that great, but i can go along for the ride.
Takes a bit getting used to.

I wonder will we have any other abilities and spells as we progress and level up or is its going to be just source stuff. Right now we have only one source point, but Ui shows room for three.
Which means three source abilities or spells to start a fight at best, and then you have to use source vampirism to get more during one fight, probably from defeated enemies as its done now.

Could be ok... but it would be all better if armors weren't such hard immunity barriers by default.

I have to be clear, im not having a bad time in combat in this game. But the features that make the combat really good are not these hard "immunity shield" mechanics.

Its the Ai of enemies, diversity of enemy types and diversity of abilities and options which multiply the overall positive end effect. And environmental design which affects all that even more positively.

Yeah i agree with all that.
Maybe we are getting that additional civil point only because there is a separation and if there wasnt we would get only two points at start.

Now, obviously bartering and thievery are very useful skills to have.

But the problem is that this is a party based game and we already get two companions which have those skills and which will serve as trader and thief for the whole game.

So when im building my character i dont need those.
And if im building the whole party i already know i will have two characters dedicated to those things.

Loremaster seems to be working in full only with one point in it, later on you need two to identify some items, but its not like you cannot identify them at some trader anyway, and you get many items that increase the skill - so you dont need to spend points on it.

Enemy information is available with just one point too. If they would change that you you would actually need more points to see more info about enemies it would make the skill more valuable, although not essential.
I would even remove those enemy overhead bars that show their armor and health status without points in loremastery.

This is additionally compounded by lackluster defensive skills too. I played without a single point invested in any and still finished the whole alpha without much problems.

Why would you need defense when you have immunity to everything as long as your armors are up?

And since main attributes affects how much armor you have and how much damage you deal - more then any other skill or ability... why would you even spend points in them?

Of course its good to have those defensive skills and other abilities adding to these mechanics, its good to have such options but they are just smaller additions right now.
My point is they could or should be better.

Even health is influenced more by just leveling up then investing in constitution.

And on top of that we have equipment that affects these basic main features a lot.

So right now, as things are - the skills and abilities are the least valuable in terms of their effect on the gameplay out of the all main features of the game.

Attributes are most valuable and most important (except con which is hobbled by leveling up), equipment is second.

The combat abilities are far third and only because they have synergy effects, like Pyromancer affecting any fire based damage, Hunter affecting any damage done from elevated positions or warfare increasing any damage against physical armor.

Then again you have hydro which... heals more?

meh?

Who cares about that when we have all the health potions and armors which are far more important then vitality.
Which actually are vitality under a different name - and immunity against every spell or ability damage and effect.

Ill just add another issue here, although ive seen other threads about it.

The default talents are mostly poor choices and there is a problem in them being locked and forced onto builds, even custom ones.

I can accept two talents being default and locked for origin characters, but both Lohse and Ifan could and should have some better second talents. Some of the best ones available but chosen to fit with their background stories.

Only one of them can be seen as a kind of racial trait, like corpse eating, fire breath of lizards or that dwarf guile thing but human specific talent should not be "thrifty", thats really a poor choice.

For the custom builds it would be very - very nice and fitting if we could choose two talents in character creation instead of just one, (except the default racial talent), especially because they are so rare later on. Its not like we can unbalance the game by having two choices and it makes no sense for custom builds to have two talents locked by default.

One racial specific, ok - but not two.