Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Ideas for Traits and Talents

Talent: Monster Lore - For the purposes of identifying stats of people/monsters ONLY, your Intelligence is considered to have an additional +2 Intelligence per level of Monster Lore. (I don't know what the effect of a single point of Intelligence is to identifying monsters, so maybe +1 per level will suffice.)

This talent is useful for those characters who might want to identify monsters stats better, but without spending too many points into Intelligence themselves.


Talent: Nightvision - Gain a temporary bonus to Perception (+1/Level of Nightvision) at night time. Doesn't function in high-light areas such as those with a torch or other bright light source.

There could be a bunch of Personality Traits that would only be available on character creation that give +1 to Attribute X and -1 to Attribute Y. Examples:

Trait: Bookworm - While others spent their free hours training their bodies on the field or in the arena, you preferred to exercise your mind in the library. +1 (Initial) Intelligence, -1 (Initial) Strength.

Trait: Gym Overdose - You spent so much time bodybuilding that your muscles have grown muscles. Unfortunately sometimes that means your muscles get in the way of each other. +1 Strength, -1 Dexterity.

Trait: Track Star - Running is your passion, but you spend so much of your time moving fast that you don't have time to absorb all the little details others see. +1 Speed, -1 Perception.

Trait: Unlawful Explorer - There were no shortages of locked doors and forgotten passages at Blackrock Citadel, and you enjoyed the challenge of picking the ancient locks and exploring the dust-filled passages beyond, forgotten by the centuries. Inhaling all that dust however, did your body no good. +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution.

Trait: Endurance Training - You know that endurance is the key to survival, and you spent your free hours running up and down stairs. Your body is in better shape than ever, although you weren't able to find enough time for your studies. +1 Constitution, -1 Intelligence.

Trait: Birdwatcher - You enjoy watching wildlife at their daily activities. Most become alarmed at the presence of a human, so you have trained yourself to be still and watch. Being still all the time means you're not used to moving quickly when it counts. +1 Perception, -1 Speed.

Elemental Affinity sounds like a good talent/trait for the specialist mage. Maybe it could decrease casting costs for X element type spells, and raise the casting costs for the opposite element spells.





Strictly speaking, that sounds like more like a Personality Traits than a Talent, because it is emergent from your style of play.

Your post did give me an idea on how to make Altruism a useful trait - be Altruistic enough, and it could be a percentage increase of the gold you get as a reward from quests that give a gold reward. Steal too much, and even if you don't get caught, you'll lose that trait.

Here some suggestions I also had on the comments but makes more sense to put them here:

I would love to see something like an elemental affinity trait.
The idea is that if you use one element much more than any other you start building an affinity to this talent and the spells of that element get a little stronger while the direct opposite of that element gets weaker.

Example:
Fire Affinity: +1 Fire Based Spells -1 Water Based Spells
Earth Affinity: +1 Earth Based Spells -1 Air Based Spells

With regards to Talents:
Butchery talent:

The idea was based on the fact that you can bake bread in the game (as you said). That would imply that you can do some cooking. If that's the case then when you kill animals you should be able to butcher them for the meat and make some limited food out of it. That brought us to the topic of Weresheep and if it wouldn't be fun to have a secret recepie for Weresheep Roast you could find. That whole discussion lead us to having butchery as a trait, and that you could make your "Butcher" quest relevant by actually being able to learn the "butchery" trait from the Butcher if you chose an alternative ending for that quest. You might find out in the book in the Shelter at the End of time though that the Butcher does some pretty horrible things afterward. But that should be ok since you can always go back and kill him then =)

Garod, I like the elemental affinities you are proposing, and that butchery talent is good, but a bit creepy too. Me like!

Stabbey, Monster Lore sounds quite interesting too, but like the other ones you proposed, it's very hard to know what one unit of intelligence, etc, will entail. Perhaps you could keep the names and the ideas, but making them enhance such skills in other ways - how, I don't know.

Talent: Coordination - When attacking a flanked enemy, your chance to hit is increased.

I want a talent that would synergize well with focusing on an enemy, but a flat damage increase was too boring and possibly too powerful. I didn't want to make it a trait with a negative downside which could cause problems, because there are a lot of possible situations where you don't want both people attacking the same target, so many that a penalty would outweigh the benefit for taking this.


Talent: Musician - Some enemies can use music to boost their abilities/heal, and with this talent, you can use instruments in the same way!

(Maybe this should be a skill or two? Probably not enough for an entire skill tree.)


Trait: Spirit Eater (Necromancy) - Delivering the killing blow to an enemy devours their spirit, recovering a little bit of mana for you, but the dark power prevents you from properly resting (you don't recover mana from resting).

i like the idea of Negative Traits to, but Madness is not a negative trait.

I really like your ideas mate but i got to change the last on simply got to

Soul Master: Set of abilities, pasive and active.
Description: Only a true master of the necromantic and spiritial magic arts may ever hope to atain such powers, fully understanding the realm of death and its mysteries may help one gain power over its eartly inhabitants.

Pasiv: Spiritual insight: All spirits have reason to fear you, your powers are so great you may detect them no matter where they hide.
+Stabbey idea of spirit eater.
Active: Ghostly Shackles: Any enemy caught under the efects of this spell will not find peace in death, instead their soul will become a slave to the caster, weaker souls can be devoured or burned in hellfire, stronger souls may only be banished.

I love love love this idea! but instead of Int being a 10% refund chance..perhaps a +3 or +5 mana regen per turn?

I think the main problem by most games in the past was that developers inserted a lot of skills/talents/traits but often ended up neglecting most of them in the gameplay that many got quite useless or even redundant.

Some of them might not thought about that as others might had plans but had to cut corners because of budget issues as time is ever a big fiend of game makers, especially when you are not independent.
another big point is of course how central armed conflicts are in most games so that most people tend naturally to focus their points on everything which let them survive.

At the end it lies mainly in the hands of the developers if they take in a later production phase a re-look over their skills and make adaptions to the path the game took with time and cut a skill which looked good at first, maybe add another which fits better as long at least the majority of skills can have somehow some influence in the game.

In a paper game we made you could also pick quirks which gave players a few more points in skills but also added aspects to their characters which could be a more or less serious disadvantage at times. At first they were not too thrilled but realized quickly how much fun actually those quirks could be as it added depth (and realism as their hero was not perfect) and added interaction hooks between players.