Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Mess of thoughts; Skills/attributes/weapons mainly

Just a messy post to dump some of my ideas into;

“Dipping” into skill lines is easy to get access to a few specific abilities. This is most obvious with abilities like Cloak and Dagger, Tactical Retreat and similar. While I like and understand that you can dabble into skills to access their abilities without mastering them, the way the game is balanced does not reward this due to the way abilities scale. Main attributes giving raw damage(and thus forcing you to pick one for optimal efficiency), and the multiplicative scaling of the skill bonuses are a big part of this.

What if neither strength, finesse, or intelligence increased the damage of your abilities directly, but instead have an effect that is effective for everyone, but some getting a greater benefit than others, for example; Finesse giving Crit damage % would benefit dagger users most, but still benefits others.



Attributes should have secondary benefits as well; Strength has the carrying capacity and opening/moving heavy equipment. This is good, but similar benefits should be given to the other attributes. Finesse to help with tasks that require fine finger-movement, like thievery. Which brings me to something else really quickly;

Civic talents. Pet Pal is a really cool talent, but it does not benefit you in combat. Instead, a new slew of civic talents which help enable content; Pet Pal, Thievery, and Telekinesis would all be talents. Pet Pal is influenced by a variety of attributes depending on the conversation, Thievery would rely on Finesse how effective it is, and Telekinesis on intelligence. (On that note; telekinesis needs to be more widely applicable and have more puzzles/shortcuts that would warrant its use)

It might be best if all civic skills are either moved to talents, or made baseline and influenced by attributes. (or a combination of the two) At least, if there aren't enough civic skills left.

Now back to regular skills; If they no longer scale by main attribute, what stops people from making weird combinations? Well, nothing, but neither does the current system which merely makes them subpar. But the current system also effectively stops you from playing actually interesting builds like a battlemage.

With main attributes no longer boosting specific weapons or skills, more options for players open up. The damage bonuses of skills and the physical/magical armour system as they are remain an obstacle to hybrid characters and the latter for parties.

First, the damage bonuses of skill investment; They're a multiplicative increase which exponentionally grows the gap between hybrid and “pure” characters(pure being defined as; all skills synergize towards benefitting a single goal; dealing damage with a bow for example)

Making them additive does not actually solve the problem(and meaningless if main attributes give no damage increase), as it merely makes the difference grow at a slower rate compared to someone taking points in Pyrokinetic and Geomancer(whose benefits do not apply to the other). Instead, I would like to see the benefit you get from skills to be defensive in nature; Pyrokinetic giving fire resistance, scoundrel giving dodge % etc.

This would make each attribute give something flavorful that is of value, and can be a visual cue of its strong points: “He used a fire spell? Probably has quite a bit of fire resistance.” You would need to change at which skill levels you can use certain abilities to avoid just dipping into everything so you can use anything; jack of all trades, master of all is something you want to avoid. To that end, I suggest increasing the level you need in a skill for nearly all abilities. Power * Archetype fantasy, reduced by how weird it may or may not be for another character to use an ability like that. Uncanny Evasion, an aerotheurge ability, is quite powerful, but doesn't fulfill the archetype fantasy very strongly, it's also not weird to see a scoundrel or archer using it so this is an ability that someone who dabbles in the skill could use, so a tier 1, or skill level 1 required skill.

Other skills, like Tornado, have both a high power and archetype fantasy, and it'd also be unlikely for someone who dabbles into the aerotheurge skill to use, this is a higher tier ability at about 7 or higher. Especially movement abilities like Cloak and Dagger/Tactical Retreat/Phoenix Dive make this dipping quite bad and reduce flavor in favor of mechanical benefits. One additional suggestion regarding the movement abilities; making a special slot or two for abilities with that function, but allowing duplicate abilities(ie; you can have 2x tactical retreat, or 1x Tactical Retreat and 1x Nether Swap for example). (And make Phoenix Dive a Pyrokinetic ability, and give warfare a leap)

This way, people can play a jack of all trades, master of none and not be punished by numbers, but they won't have the mastery of the elements of spells like earthquake and tornado while also striking a mortal blow from stealth beforehand which are some of the archetype cornerstones of skills like aerotheurgy, geomancy, and scoundrels. While yes, to an extent the current system also prevents this, but it also prevents the battlemage archetype, or any other martial character which dabbles in offensive magic.

Secondly(Oof, took a while to get to the second point), the physical/magical armour system. Right now it cuts off interaction between physical and magic damage users completely. Instead; Physical armour reduces damage of physical attacks by ~30% (could be more or less), and magical armour that of magic damage by the same %, but only 50% of the reduced damage is absorbed, the rest going directly to vitality. When one armour type is gone, the remaining damage goes to the other armour type which does not reduce that damage type. This would make a mixed party still useful to pick off individual targets, without having to both hack at a separate health pool first.

Very important to note that this does require debuff protection to change because armour goes down slower; making thesholds of armour to show what kind of debuffs can be applied. For example; Chicken Claw or Frozen might require physical or magic armour to be between 0-30% or be resisted, while Bleeding or burning might require 0-80%, effects like silencing 0-50% etc. (all of the % are outlined on the abilities that apply it).

Now on to my final point for this mess; Physical damage types.

One of the problems of magic vs physical is all the resistances that magic damage has against it. One way to balance this is by splitting up physical damage into 3-4 groups;
Piercing(Arrows, daggers, spears, half of the damage from swords)
Slashing(Axes, half of the damage from swords)
Crushing(Maces)
Necrotic(decay/infestation and the like)

With enemies resisting each damage type individually, just like with magic damage. Skeletons being weak to crushing, but strong against piercing for example.

Relating to weapons; we need a weapon swap to be done easily with this change, which alongside the other changes would allow you to actually build a character that can effectively use a bow while also swinging his sword in melee.

- It's hard to have an attribute which is equally good for everyone, and arguably, "equally good" is not actually something to aspire to. After all, unless you're playing an Elder Scrolls game, there are only so many points you're going to be able to get, you can't max out all attributes. I think giving most attributes some use for different archtypes is good.

- I definitely agree that Telekinesis is kinda subpar, there's not really much reason to take it over one of the much more obviously beneficial Civil abilities. It's still an improvement over D:OS 1 where there was no differentiation between Civil and Combat. But oh good, I can lift things too heavy for STR characters to lift, and very rarely I can reach an item far away... except that if you have LoS you can almost certainly teleport it closer instead.

- If you were to move all Civil skills to Talents, obviously the frequency of Talent points would need to be increased, but that would promote taking Combat-related Talents, so then you'd maybe need to make a distinction between Civil and Combat Talents, and then you've come into a big circle.

- I think 3-5% Resistance to X element per point into X skill school is an idea which makes sense. Enemy base resistances might need to be adjusted down to take that into account, but I think the idea is reasonable.

- I would be quite careful about suddenly restricting movement skills. Fairly cheap movement has been in the game for all of EA. It probably hasn't been easy to notice, but if all of it was taken away, that would be a very dramatic change in combat - especially since enemies would almost certainly NOT lose their free movement. What the combat would look like in a game without movement skills is unclear.




Who does this? In the current game, who is both a strong melee fighter and powerful with int-based damage spells? Both the armor system and the attributes work against that.




The idea I have is somewhat similar, except that damage goes to both armor types from the start, it doesn't shift after one armor type is gone. I suggested a 75-25 ratio of armor damage, although it could go as low as 67-33.

Once an armor type is depleted, the same amount of damage which would have hit the armor goes directly to health.

• So a 100 Magic Damage attack on a 300 HP Magister with 100 Physical and 100 Magical armor would leave the Magister with 75 Physical and 25 Magical armor.
• A 100 Magic Damage attack on a 300 HP Magister with 0 Physical and 100 Magical armor would leave the Magister with 275 HP and 25 Magical armor.

Thus, even if physical attackers have stripped away all their armor first, mages could still contribute by dealing some direct damage.



Here's where my idea differs: X-type Armor still blocks X-Type status effects as long as it is above zero. That said your idea seems to be an interesting idea, if more complex to understand, being a case-by-case basis for each status effect.

- The idea of physical weapon types is not a new one, and not a bad one but I suspect that it got voted down at Larian. Good idea adding Necrotic to the Physical damage types.

Thanks a lot for the response.



Ah, I did specify "but some getting a greater benefit than others", with Finesse giving critical damage as an example of someone that benefits more(dagger users). Hoped that would have been clear enough; but yes, I think attributes should still fulfill the fantasy of an archetype. It would be weird to have the most optimal stealth dagger wielding rogue to be using pure strength, or a spell-slinger using his massive muscles to do so. The exact effects of the attributes are of course not that easy to determine.



Ah, actually; a few civic talents instead of a bunch of points to max out of civic skills have several differences; If the talents also scale by attribute as I suggested (possibly not just by 1, or a different part of the talent is affected by different attributes, Intelligence affecting Telekinesis range, strength its capacity etc.) Thievery using strength to unlock some objects, intelligence for others, and finesse for most locks etc. etc.

As it is now; you basically max out a different civic ability with each character and leave it at that. With civic talents they're something your character can do now, which is improved by your attributes in a variety of ways. One of the things I think is important though, is to have each talent have several abilities keyed off it, and enough encounters in the world for it to matter.





Like I said; 1-2 movement memory slots rather than the "as many as you can" as it is now. Even letting you choose the same skill twice(if 2 slots). I like the movement abilities, but having 3 or even more gets out of hand in my opinion. Makes terrain less meaningful.



I agree, but take the entire post as one with all changes it contains, they're generally related to eachother. With the changes you would be able to make a battlemage or a true jack of all trades.



Hmm, I wouldn't mind this, though I do prefer my own suggestion because it makes healing more useful because of the vitality damage always going through.



Case-by-base, but some baseline to go from. Effect(CC/Damage/debuff etc.) * Duration, damage effects would only need a slightly damaged armour, with debuffs taking more, and stuns and the like even more. I don't think it's that complex, would need to be shown poperly in the UI though.



Yeah, I think it'd be weird for decay to deal slashing/crushing/piercing damage. A magic that just eats away at the body.

Sorry, but I cannot agree at all with moving Thievery and Telekinesis to Talents. The former is because it useful so often that it would be crippling to your combat abilities to have so spend a Talent on that, and FFS, we just got rid of the Backstab Talent Tax, I don't want it brought back immediately.

The latter is again, because Telekinesis is so lousy and situationally useful (as in, not useful in nearly every situation) that it is also not worth a Talent.

I would rather see Telekinesis removed completely then added to the list of not-very-useful Talents.




I don't really agree with that idea either. That seems too arbitrary and restrictive. Currently, the real practical limit is that every movement skill you take is one less Memory slot you have for other skills. Take too many and you're either not being efficient with your use of skill slots, or else you're not being efficient with your attribute allocation, spending too much on Memory instead of damage-dealing skills. So I think the current system is better than your restricted movement skill system.

I specified with the word "Civic talents"; a separate pool of talents that are picked from as opposed to "combat talents". Talents that have little or no use in combat, but are more for puzzle solving, exploration etc.

I'm not entirely sure about restricting the movement skills, but I do see it as an issue that it's so easy to get that many of them.

I believe the devs are going to bring "shared civil abilities" to us in the future. As for the balancing of civil abilities, I don't believe they should all linked to our stats like the way persuasion works. Since civil abilities are already separated from combat, could you elaborate more on why bringing them into combat could improve the game? Telekinesis did work based on intelligence in DOS 1 if I remember correctly.

The suggestion for armor types being only 25% to 50% effective and interchangeable at all times is interesting. Though it creates usability issues, how would a player judge the usability of a skill quickly and accurately? The calculation of a simple lighting bolt's damage is somewhat more complicated while playing the game if there is no additional tools to aid the player.

Also, it does not solve the current complaint about armor system vs Crowd Control. Currently, chain CC enemies requires the player hit them couple of times beforehand. This suggestion would also result in the same situation from player's perspective, hitting enemies few times before starting CC chain.

These are some points of concern with proposed solution.

Main attributes would not be as focused on combat as they are currently with my suggestions, at least not to the extent they were before. It's also intended to work so that no attribute is ever useless for combat, like it is now. Tying them to civil skills/talents is not a bad thing as some already are to an extent, this would just play on that more.

What? Armor types being 25/50% effective and interchangable? I'm confused now, pretty sure that's not what I said.

Armour the way I described it is still split into two. It reduces damage taken by its associated type(physical for physical, magical for magical) by X%, and of the remaining damage, the armour absorbs 50%, the other 50% going to vitality. When one armour is completely gone, the remainder of the damage goes to the other armour type(but is not reduced). When someone's physical armour is at 80%(for example), they are now vulnerable to some debuffs, like Bleeding, but not to knocked down, which could at 33% or lower for example. The exact numbers of which would be displayed in the ability tooltip with the debuff. But yes, it IS more complex than it is now.

It does not solve chain CC as much as reduces it; it's harder to get through the armour completely, but it's also easier to deal damage to the enemies' health. Armour buffs are also more effective at protecting you from debuffs as a lot of the damage goes to vitality instead.

For me this is one of the points which makes D:OS2 than D:OS1 and kills a lot of the roleplay ability.

You want to focus on playing the social parts of the game? Sucks to be you, because you get only a limited amount of points. So in the end one guy will go Thievery, one guy lucky find, one guy loremaster and one guy bartering. So if you find a locked chest, the Thief has to open it, the looter has to loot it, if there is something to identify it has to be sent to the loremaster before, it will end in the barterers inventorey, if is only something for getting sold. This just make single player a worse chore, because it increases micromanagement.