Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Basic 3 Attributes feedback; Less generic.

Hello,

The basic three attributed (strength, Finesse, and Intellect) feel very blank and generic, as all three of them do exactly the same thing combat wise, just for different abilities.

This not only make every build very similair (stack int for a caster, finesse for a ranger/dagger, strength for a melee) it hurts hybrids immensely. A character stacking one stat, will always out-damage a character focusing on two stats by quite a large amount.

Because of this I think making the three basic stats a bit more unique from each other, with more general effects that could be useful for every build type, would be a good way to create more build diversity, especially hybrid ones, and make different playstyles really feel differently from each other.

An example of this, could be something like this;

Strength; Focusses on large hits; Gives crit multiplier and 2/3% strength skill damage

Finesse; Focusses on a lot of smaller hits; Gives a change for free actions or extra AP, and 2/3% finesse skill damage

Intellect; Focusses on more often being able to use abilities; Gives Cooldown reduction, and 2/3% int skill damage.

This not only makes each stat different from each other, and each 'pure' playstyle feel differently from each other (Large hits vs A lot of attacks vs More often using stronger attacks), but would make hybrids a lot stronger.

A battlemage for example putting half of it's stats in strength and the other half in intellect, would be a character that can use their abilities quite often, and rely on large crits for extra damage. They trade some basic damage on their skills, for a more flexible playstyle coming from the combined effect of the two main stats they focus on.

agree

I agree that they're basically the same thing.

I would honestly prefer it if they didn't add pure damage at all to any ability or weapon, and had more general effects. I disagree with your choice of benefits for the following reasons, though:

Strength giving critical hit damage would make strength the preferred attribute for daggers because of Backstab.
Finesse having a chance to give free AP makes combat extremely random.
Intelligence giving cooldown reduction would cause it to have breakpoints for individual skill cooldowns "3 turn cooldowns are reduced to 2 at XX Int, and to 1 at XX Int." Etc.

It's pretty hard to balance this properly and making each statistic a valuable choice for their respective archetype, like finesse is for rogues, and Intelligence for wizards. (Critical hit damage to finesse, and cooldown to Intellgence get fairly close, though, as far as examples go)

I'll agree that the current attributes are a little simple, but I also don't like the suggested fix.

I'm not sure what to do about STR, but another benefit from FIN could be a bonus to dodge. However, the exact number of the dodge might be hard to balance. 0.5 % dodge chance per point capping at 15% (40 total points) might work, but it might be too much on top of all other sources of Dodge bonus. But a 0.33333...% chance of dodge per point (capping at 10%, or 40 total points) might be a little small.




Yes, because of cooldown reduction, INT was super-powerful in Vanilla D:OS 1. It increased the power of mages, while doing nothing to help physical-damage classes, because mages got to increase their power and reduce their cooldowns with one stat.

Physical classes couldn't get the cooldown reduction without splitting their points, reducing their power.

They were just examples to illustrate what I ment, just made up on the fly really (Int one was literally copied from DOS1). There are most likely a lot better options to think of.

This is an issue that has been a plague upon computer RPGs for a long time. Every so often an RPG comes along that chucks the "holy trinity" of STR/DEX/INT (even if the names are different) out the window and just gives the character "Power" and has "Power" affect their Class abilities. But the games that do this also tend to have a rigid class system, so your healer won't be a god of melee or ranged combat as well.

I would agree that having the 3 stats be basically "red power, green power, blue power" is rather dry and boring. Finding the right balance so that all three are of use to everyone, but favors one "type" is not an easy task of course.

Ah fair enough, been a long time since I played D:OS1.

I think the new attributes should fulfill the following criteria;

1. Benefit all characters. For example; giving movement speed or armour, but not increasing damage of a subset of skills.
2. Be a natural fit for an archetypal character that is associated with that attribute. Rogues favoring Finesse, wizards favoring intelligence.
3. Not make each point more valuable than the last with synergies. (Crit % * Crit damage for example) The reason for this is as follows; multiple attributes are discouraged if it's optimal to focus on a single one because of synergy and multiplicative scaling, leaving us with the same kind of problem we have right now.

While I agree another painpoint is that with 3 bland main stats, we *also* have 3 utterly pointless side-stats.

Con is outclassed by armor entirely.
Wit Larian desperately snapped it's neck off (although I stack it on one char to find stuff, I just can't live without having all explored)
Mind is... eh... why bother?

Thus the alternatives to break the monotomy is utter pointlessness. That's just not good.

Con needs to either interact with armour, or have vitality matter before armour is gone. (I have a topic which I think would help make that work)

Wits is an attribute I really dislike, but only because the initiative system makes investing into it feel pointless if someone else does it as well.

Memory is an attribute I really like, I love having a big repertoire of abilities to use with a variety of effects.