Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Spells not reliant on attributes?

I'm about to start my first run with a friend and wanted to clarify a couple of things with regards to potential builds. I'll be playing a shadowblade with a focus on high damage output - likely an undead elf as my friend wants to play Fane.

As I'm hoping to drop a lot of points into finesse, scoundrel and polymorph, but would still like to splash a bit into magical ability trees, I was hoping to clarify mechanics with regards to certain spells.

Firstly in the case of hostile status spells that don't deal damage - e.g. chicken claw, how is a "hit" determined? Is there an attribute e.g. int, str required to bypass the target or can it be used by someone with only a few ranks in the ability without penalty?

Further, with spells that enhance attack with elemental attributed e.g. venom aura/firebrand, while I assume that there is a bonus for levels in a given skill (e.g. pyromancy and the flaming weapons) is there also an unlisted increase in damage from int? Are there other aspects to damage calc I should know?

Finally, favourite picks for this kind of build?

Shadowblade works incredibly well first off. Scoundrel by itself is awful imo, Polymorph fixes everything wrong with it.

Far as your questions.

Chicken Claw will always hit your target unless it's a target that is immune to it. (A few bosses) As long as your target has no physical armor left.

Buffs like Venom Coating (Geo + Scoundrel book) give extra damage based purely off the level of your character and your Combat Ability level and don't rely on INT. The spells that get a bonus damage from INT will say so.

A class suggestion that I use is a Paladin. Warfare + Geo + Hydro, I just give him all the defensive and healing abilities, none of which rely on INT at all, so he's free to not add to it at all and still heal and protect his teammates perfectly well. Also, Undead take damage from healing so he can even use his healing offensively without worrying about adding to INT.