Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Suggestions Wisdom: How it should be.

I'm still only in Act I of Beyond Divinity and haven't seen the Wisdom skill as yet, but I do remember it from Divine Divinity. It always seems to be a useless skill, giving you back barely what you put into it.

Wisdom: The skill path that gives you extra experience alowing you to level up quicker.
Earned XP: Experience points given to you by any means.
Actual XP: The experience you actually have after taking the Wisdom bonus into account. Two characters might have different Actual XP even though they've had the same Earned XP.

The following assumes each skill has a maximum of 5 levels, and that the player purchases each level of Wisdom at the earliest oppotunity. Wisdom should provide about 8 additional character levels through the course of the game. This gives you 9 or 10 additional skill points, 5 to cover the investment into the Wisdom skill and another 5 as interest on your investment. The draw back is that you have to wait later in the game to get your skill points. What follows is a simulation with a 15% experience bonus per skill level. It assumes that you need (1000 x x^3) experience points to reach the next level, x being your current level. The Skills column is the total skill points minus those spent on Wisdom.

	Without Wisdom		With Wisdom
Earned XP	Level	Skills	Level	Skills	Comments
0	1	0	1	0
225000	6	6	6	5	+15% experience.
3817174	11	12	12	11	+30% experience.
4356000	12	13	12	11
18473328	16	18	18	17	+45% experience.
23409000	18	20	18	17
54864363	22	25	24	23	+60% experience.
76176000	24	26	25	25
125519988	27	31	30	30	+75% experience.
189225000	30	35	34	34
354025000	31	36	35	36	Investment repaid!
1500625000	50	59	58	63	Profit of 4 skill points!

The only side effect not considered here is that this will also give you an additional 40 attribute points. Perhaps each level of Wisdom can reduce your six attributes by 1 point. That removes 30 points leaving a more realistic 10 point profit. After all, you need to put yourself into it to learn more!

What do people think about this?

The experience to reach a level is;
E = 1000*(level^3 - level)/3

Wisdom has 10 levels, each with a 1% bonus, and effects only the character having the skill.
You need twice as many skill points to get the same experience bonus as in DD (resulting in 1, possibly 2 extra levels), and need to double that again if you want both characters to have it.

I think that pretty much says it to those of us who are Divine Divinity veterans. What I don't understand is why the formula has been changed in such a fashion, especially since Beyond Divinity is already more difficult than the earlier game--it has smarter enemies, and fewer points to distribute among skills just to experiment.

if you have gold you can experiment,

to a degree.

i noticed they wisely made the summoning doll upgrade skill impossible to unlearn. otherwise one could have summoning-doll-zilla

.:heh:.

It gets very expensive to experiment when you're over level 25. 2 skill tree's to delete alone costs me almost fifty-five-thousand gold (roughly 26 thousand each). Doesn't seem that much at first, but now experiment freely. 55 + 55 + 55 + 55 etc. Soon mounts up.

True, but this creates a feeling of "hey, we put in deadends, you found our errors, so now we're letting you unmake those errors--for some in-game cash." That doesn't do it, for me. Either a skill should work, and work in tandem with other skills and the surrounding environment appropriately, or it shouldn't be in a game. "Two hundred skills" means nothing. "Seventy skills that let you tailor your character anyway you want, and will let you successfully win in the game in various ways" is much, much better. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

I actually still can't understand why we are forced to pay to unlearn skills. Surely if we have earnt said things we should be able to experiment freely. I know it's not frankly 'roleplaying' to keep changing things but it kinda sucks when your skills are in (for example) two-handed shadow weapon and the imp shaman is immune to shadow damage <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> It is also annoying when we add up to say 12 in accuracy to a weapon and it makes bugger all difference. I still can't hit a certain enemy. It would be nice to say, "Oh ok that doesn't work, i'll try those points in here". Probably barking up the wrong tree but I don't understand the reasoning why we pay to unlearn skills. Someone care to explain? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Making unlearning free would be unbalancing. It would make utility skills like identify/pickpocket/lockpick essentially useless, because you wouldn't need to commit points to them.

Making it low cost would not be unbalancing though. It would change the game mechanics, but in a good way that would make for interesting strategies. Imagine spending 2000 gold to shift 10 points into lockpick, unlock a few doors, then shift the points back to slashing damage.

Tom

Well said. Unlearning has to cost something or it would have no point. You could change your charater to suit the situation far too easily instead of having to make do with the choices you've made, thinking your way around the game and maybe having to go back and remake your character.

Nobody gets it right first time through unless you're told exactly what to expect at every point in the game. Where's the fun in that?

I wouldn't even lower the cost. You spent 10 points in a utility skill? You muppet! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ROFL.gif" alt="" /> Live with it. I personally would leave the chest or door locked.
They'll be nothing essential in there anyway.

I know lockpick is broken too. You don't have to tell me that....

Why not simply remove unlearning, and make the skills that are in Beyond Divinity actually work? If Fire Missiles actually did good damage after investing 5 points, I wouldn't be inclined to unlearn the skill. Conversely, if you invest points in Lockpick and learn it doesn't work, why should you be charged to unlearn it?

I made lockpick an example in my post assuming some fantasy situation in which it actually works like it should. Even then I wouldn't dump so many points into it unless it was necessary for quest completion.

Anyway, I believe that's why they have a scale of price/level for unlearn. You can use fire missiles untill you get better spells if you want and do a cheap buy-back at low level.

Personally if I knew it was a low-damage skill I would wait for those better spells and use a sword or whatever. That's what the D2 skill system was all about. You would never dump 20 points into ice blast what you had frozen orb at level 30. The problem I think is with DnD players, i.e. 'true' roleplayers or whatever they think they are. They follow a system that's incredibly restrictive i.e. a mage must use spells all the time, not wear armour and so on and its definatley not what <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> is all about.

You have to think outside of the box.

Either buyback or restart. You have 2 choices in the game as it stands. Simple as that.

Apparently you haven't played 1.10 -- there's a very good reason to pump up lower supporting skills, because they synergize with later skills, and vice versa. Some low level skills receive so many synergies, that it's tempting to add points in high level skills to make the low level ones even more effective.

But that's neither here nor there, since neither DD nor BD use that sort of tiered skill system. Or any sort of tier, really.


So, you're content with mediocrity, then? Because there simply are not enough skill or stat points to make a warrior who can use spells as well. You'll either have to give short shrift to one or the other, or be awful at both. Investing in strength and constitution is a waste of points for a mage that stays out of combat and doesn't need heavy armor. Investing in intelligence is a waste for a fighter who just needs to know where to swing his battle axe.


3 choices, actually -- buyback, restart, or save the game before you a) buy the skill from a vendor and b) try it out a little bit to see if it's broken or sucky. If it's crappy, as too many skills are, you can always reload and get back the points for free, and no amount of "You shouldn't be able to do that in the context of a real story" arguments are going to change that. You shouldn't be able to save and reload in a real story, either, but this ISN'T a real story.
Also, stories of heroic adventures are seldom told about the mage who unwittingly blew a bunch of stat points in Act 1 skills, just to find out that he had to empty his mana stores to seriously harm *1* foe. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

With respect, I've kicked apart many attempts to put me in a box in the past, including what may be an attempt of yours, above. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> I'm not into any system, (rant) much less the incredibly unimaginative, assembly-line D&D products that have foisted so much bad literature and rigid gaming systems on us in the name of fantasy. (/rant) Oh, it felt so good saying that. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

According to the skills table, my 6 point fire missiles should actually do considerably more damage than 2 point-accuracy/1 point-damage slashing with a simple scimitar. But in fact, they're not. So the skill is not acting as it should. The solution isn't charging me to unlearn it, which in effect tells the player that "we're not responsible for skills which don't act as we say; pay up and try again." The solution is making the skills do exactly as they say from the start, and removing "unlearning" altogether, in my opinion.

Sorry, forgot about 1.10. I created MANY good chars in 1.10. I used the synergies to good effect too. After maxing out my primary skill however.

As for the rest. I will have to play some more and get back to you with my approach to <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" />.
I know for definate I will find something else to use now I know that the lower level spells ain't so hot.

Peace people. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Just curious, at roughly what character level to you learn Wisdom?

I'm not sure what the recent changes to the BF skills did, but in v1.3 (or was it earlier?) Wisdom was available in the act 1 BF. You could get there at level 4, but it would probably take another couple levels or so to be able to afford it.