Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Small Armour system change to encourage variety

The one thing I do not like about this game is that the differentiation into physical and magic armour leads to the situation that characters that specialise in dealing damage to one type (and you basically have to do that) do not synergise with characters that deal damage to the other kind at all.

It should be possible to weaken an enemy with a fireball and let the front liner finish them off with a sword. In the current state of the came, the front-liner won't benefit from the previous spell at all because the spell destroyed the enemies magic armour but he has to destroy his physical armour now.

This could easily be fixed by just having all kinds of damage affect both armour bars. Depending on the ratio between physical and magic armour, you'd get resistances or vulnerabilities to physical and magic damage. So if your ratio is 50% physical / 50% magic, you get no resistances or vulnerabilities at all. Every attack you receive deals exactly the normal amount of damage to both types of armour. If the ratio is 70% physical / 30% magic, for example, you'd have 20% resistance to physical damage and 20% vulnerability to magic damage (always the difference to 50%). This would mean that all physical attacks would deal 20% less damage than normal to your physical armour and magic attacks would deal 20% more damage to your magic armour than normal.

If one armour type is broken and the other is not, it continues likes this but the damage that would affect the broken armour is now applied to vitality instead. A positive modifier to the damage would not affect damage to vitality, you would deal normal damage instead (and still damage the other armour type with your negative modifier). A negative modifier would affect the damage to vitality as long as the target still has armour of the other type (which you would still affect with your other, positive modifier).

If both armour types are gone, the resistances and vulnerabilities from armour ratio stop mattering at all and you only apply the normal damage of your attack (and its's also not applied twice). It would basically work as before when attacking an enemy that has no armour at all. Only the amount of damage matters, not the type.

That way it would still matter if you wear intelligence, finesse or strength armour and it would still be beneficial to check if an enemy has lower physical or magic armour to target the weak spot. It would be possible to have two characters that deal different damage types working well together. It would even work well to have a single character that deals different kind of damage. More interesting builds would be possible.

What do you think? Would this be a good change? Do you think there is a better option? Should Larian implement this? Could it be done with a mod?

IMO doesn't make much sense to a magic spell to do damage to Physical Armor, maybe except for Necro and Geo. Also, your are suggesting basically to unify armor into one, but a lot more complicated.
The armor system was created to prevent you doing CC to multiple enemies easily like in the first game. It's not perfect (make CC lot less appealing) but it do good job.

If you want to argue with immersion I have to say that i find the whole concept not really immersive at all.

A fireball can be blocked by a plate of metal as well as by some mystical energy shield. It makes no sense that the former has zero effect on it and the game threats it like you're running naked into the fireball if you only have physical armour.


Did you read my entire post? That's *not* what I suggest. I suggest a fluid system where attacking someone always helps a bit, but attacking the weaker armour is still beneficial. It's superior in every possible way to the current system.


I am aware. That's why I made a proposition that keeps that great aspect but also allows characters that deal different damage types to work together. What exactly is not desirable about that?


If "good job" includes that if you play with only two characters, you're forced to have only characters that deal the same damage type and thus have a vast decrease in possible combinations and builds, then it really does a great job, yes.

Of all the suggested changes to armor, this is the idea which I agree with.

I think the ratio should be something between 66:33 and 75:25, and the damage hits. Any lower than 66% would make the effect of different attack types working better against different armor types almost irrelevant, and any higher than 75% would make the damage done to the opposing type too minimal to be much use. So maybe 70:30 is a good ratio.





Why not? The armor is tied right to the items themselves. Should plate mail be completely invulnerable to fire or electricity? Should a sword pass completely through a magical shield with no effect?

I don't see any particular lore reason why the respective armors must be completely invulnerable to the opposing type. We can just say that the armor is not completely efficient against the opposing type.




I agree with this, but that doesn't mean the system couldn't be tweaked a little. Right now a mixed party of 2 magic/2 physical attackers doesn't synergize well with each other because one armor type can be gone but the other teammates can't take advantage of that.

I read your post, but your suggestion was way too complicated. So let my get it straight:
if you do a 100 damage with physical attack, the enemy have 100 PA and 200 MA, how much damage you will do to each armor?
Also, the ratio depends on the amount of PA and MA that the person have, correct? So, I do more magic damage to a person with higher MA? Or a mage with already low PA takes more damage of physical attacks? Or a fireball deals X% of it damage to MA and Y% to PA?

When I said that the armor does a good job, I mean that to prevent CC being too powerful. Also, nobody is forcing you to use 1 type of damage... Is optimal, sure, but because the enemies have different amount of MA and PA, one character can kill a enemy with low MA with magic while the other kill the enemy with low PA with physical attacks. Last, but not least, Lone Wolf is a very powerful talent that combined with other skills, you can do a solo run with it.

I beat the game with 2 Mages, 1 Tank and 1 Archer (on Classical)

Of course, some battles would be easier if I invested only in one type (or better yet, invested on 2H than a tank), but wasn't that impossible. Even on my future Tactician run, I am playing to use a hybrid party (2 mages and 2 physical).

Anyway, sorry if didn't understand your post correctly. And maybe a split damage between PA and MA could be beneficial and like you said, can open to new builds and strategies



Hm... You made a good point.

Lovely idea. Always bugged me out why big iceshard or rock are not physically hurting the enemy. I think its possible to add a few talents to affect on this system in addition, something like "Adaptive magic" that switches the ratio to the lowest amount of enemy armor type.

I like the concept of this, but I agree that it's complicated which is why my reluctance toward using it increased as I read.

Bad idea; last thing we need is more pointless talents, lol. Talents should be interesting bonuses, not a shifting of your damage ratios.