Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Mana and Health

I understand the usage of mana and heath pots, but it puts the feeling that if you don't have several health/mana/rejuvenation pots with you while out exploring, you will no doubt die from not being able to cast magic and only be able to auto attack.

I'm not say to add anything, I was just wondering what will you do about this? Will it be a bit revampped, or is it something you want, that everyone needs lots of pots. Also how does %age of hitting work? I know this is pre-alpha, but being super close in front of someone, but missing with an arrow, seems highly unlikely. I guess they could dodge, but in a lot of the update footage, there were more misses than actually any hits with auto attacks, versus magic seems a lot more reliable. Makes auto attacking close to pointless. Mana/Rejuv pots ftw.

The damage / mana requirements, etc still need to be balanced, and resting is not in the game yet (there is still debate on that). All the skills have yet to be designed / implemented, and Larian is deliberately not showing some skills yet.


Welcome to the forum.

Larian, for your own sanity, in the next build, add a developer mode cheat code or two to refill health and mana.

Haha, every single time .. "damn.. we either need manapotions or cheatkill those guys " :P

To be honest I hope that potions in the actual game are very rare and valuable. For divinity and a-rpg like titan quest I can see the concept of spamming potions - but for a TBS role playing game I would like for potions to be a bit less common (there was an rpg i played recently but the name slips from my thought where potions were in fact quite infrequent - though you make a few with effort - sadly I did not so grand in that game). Anyways I'm sure this is something they will work on - regen rate in/out of combat potions; brewing and stuff.
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To be honest I would like to see a unique mechanic for mana because of the previous 'mana' implementation boild down to spamming potions or resting till 'full' before the big fight and I dream there is a system out there that works totally different and much better. Since they draw energy from the source perhaps there could be a link there and the effect of draining too much from the source could be different then yes and no - some sort of fatigue or exhaustion - maybe you collapse if you draw too heavily or something like that or others notice your drain on the source and something nasty happens like a jack-o-latern pops out. Would need to understand better the lore of the source.

I like how the Witcher series does it; potions are a big deal. You don't just empty them down your throat in an attempt to outdo the enormous amounts of blood your losing to the enemy's attacks, you carefully prepare them yourself from ingredients you've learned about, then make a special point of drinking them before a fight.

It was also cool seeing how Square Enix depicted the potions in the Final Fantasy next-gen tech demo. The character drank the potion after being shot, it seemed to have a horrible effect on her as she writhed on the ground with the bullets emerging from her body and dropping to the ground. It seemed quite a miraculous thing, and quite strange, as opposed to just going glunk and adding more red to your health bar.

Yea witcher is pretty interesting and most of the potions have +/-. Actually I found potions in witcher 1 more powerful than witcher 2 - but loved that cat-eye

Personally I think regeneration can ruin a game as you can learn where the difficult fights are then draws enemies away one by one or pause until you have regenerated fully then wade into battle. If potions are scarce it adds another level of tactical game play, do you use a potion when your at half health or are you about to face a big boss and it would be better to save it etc.

It's a tricky balance, though. Having a ton of potions seems a bit silly, and too ARPG-ish, but if they're truly rare, and the combat is challenging, then you could easily end up in a terrible situation you can't really get out of. One solution is to have healing magic have a pretty long casting time. That way, your only real option for healing in combat is a potion - and they can be scarce to keep the difficulty up - but thanks to healing magic, you won't typically find yourself in the middle of nowhere with 1HP. It's just not so easy to use in combat.

I know what you mean, I remember recently I was stuck in a dungeon (actual game escapes me atm) with a giant boss battle to my front and a long run back to a safe area with a shop for potions, luckily I make separate saves, very frequently but lost around three hours of game play. Maybe a once per day healing spell with a v slow regen of mana. This might be enough to keep players getting stuck but also manage to keep the idea that potions are not to just be squandered.

I thought it was funny when people wrote that Swen was always running out of Mana in the playthroughs, there was always coming a potion of Mana in his direction, hehe. Well, the source magic is costly, and aptly so, it just needs a bit of balancing and tweaking, that's all.

Auto-regen or potion can all be balanced. Classic example would be charges refilled after rest, there are not even mana points, just health/hit points. Auto-regen could be done if it's a more magic heavy build, since it's turn based, if you are in combat, it still gonna regen a specific amount based on your stat, if you flee, it could regen a bit faster. It can be tied to health(ie full health regen mana faster based on stats.) Potion can span through multiple turns, ie. heal x points per turn for next N turns base on potion power. Or a spell that trades you health( or henchman health) and converts to mana. It's all been done before.

I think the fact that Sven was always running out of mana in the playthroughs shows that it is not currently well balanced. It could have been the result of a low level character using a high level spell, but we don't know that yet. Mana per spell can be complex depending on levels and power so this might end up not being a major issue. I well remember spamming pots (I made myself) in the original, but I'd prefer that not to a necessity in a TB game.

I don't think making potions relatively rare will work.
Based on the gameplay I saw this past week, magic seems to be a big part of this game.

Basically turn based action points will fixes most of potion spam problem. In older game you have to juggle with do I cast a spell now and possibly end the fight or try to heal so I don't lose a party member. Even if you have unlimited amount of potion(say a meditation skill that cost only action point to regen mana), you are still bond to the turn based nature of game flow, you can't get instantly 3 mana potions that stacks and fill your mana while you can still continuous magic, it just won't happen.

Mana/Health recovery is always a big part of RPG game, if shows the progression of your character, you can cast more spell, become stronger and take more hits, so as the amount that you can recover from lost/used ones. And turn based happens to be a really easy way out to avoid exploits and spam.
You always facing possible critical roll, in tough fight that's what keeps everyone on their toes.

Yea, it'll require lots of planning and change. I just wondering how it'll change, cause magic/source is key element in the game, so magic in-turn is just as important. Most players will go pure magic damage and less auto attacking, unless changed in someway.

There's a few ways this can be balanced. The mana pool could be increased, the spell cost cout be reduced (which is basically the same thing). Mana could regenerate over time (very, very slowly would be my vote) or encounters can be reduced or spread out.

My own feelings about this aren't particularly set in stone, because not having played the game it's tough to get a sense about how it all fits together. In general, I would favor potions not littering the game world like a typical ARPG, instead maybe just make more food items that restore moderate amounts of health and mana, particularly early in the game.

Well as I said earlier I (ok see the word I) would be curious if something like fatigue could increase as you case. So instead of having a boolean - have/don't have mana; the character could become exhausted which of course means casting takes longer and fighting is less effective. There is no true boolean but if you become too exhausted there is always the chance you will collapse (sort of the idea of stamia in some games but here there is a tighter link between stamia and casting) and since stamia is not directly 'visible' you can't have stamia potions but there could still be rare mana potions and perhaps rare potions you drink before combat that increase regen rate (ala witcher 2).
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As stated above there is a lot of flaws - I'm just tossing out a general direction/path in case someone at Larian likes the general idea and want to refine it to playable mechanics.

Wouldn't this sort of simply be like having mana regenerate to full after battle?

Here's my 2 cents- I don't like over-reliance on potions in games. It basically deletes all the tension you get from combat encounters. Hoping Larian balances it well.

EDIT: Maybe they could make it so you regen some Mana and maybe HP after every battle?