Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Attributes, Skills, Talents and Traits Discussion

I figured we could probably use a thread for general discussion about use and balance of various attributes, skills, talents and traits.


Speed is a phenomenally useful attribute for all classes. More speed not only gives more Action Points, but makes each action point spent on movement make you go farther - thus leaving more action points free to spend on combat. I wonder at what point a speed-heavy build could out-damage a more traditional build. I think I should try that.

EDIT: I was wrong on the action points thing. I'll look at this again.



Skills that I don't know what they actually do:

1. Way of the Warrior / Way of the Ranger Survivor / Battle Magic

Okay, I know the general idea behind these skills, but I want to know if there's a reason to boost specific skills in those trees instead of just those top tier ones. What's my wizard's incentive for boosting Fire Magic when Battle Magic boosts all four elements at once? If there is a difference, it's currently unclear and should get explained better at some point.

9. Unarmed
Currently, Unarmed is locked at power level 1, further points do nothing. Don't bother putting points into it in this build.

2. Black Rock
This is a mysterious skill. I have two guesses as to how it could go: A) at some point Black Rock weapons will be so common that it's worth specializing in them, or B) Black Rock weapons will be rare, but very powerful and nigh-unusable without specializing in them. Either way, I have to wonder if a one-handed Black Rock weapon will stack with the bonuses of my one-handed skill, or if one overwrites the other.

3. Shield Specialist
Does this only count for the defense bonus of using a shield, or if I use a one-handed weapon and a shield (requiring me to also spend points in 1H weapons), does the shield skill boost my damage with a 1H weapon as well, and overwrite whatever skill I have in 1H weapons?


2 & 3. These are possible balance issues. The easy solution would be that they do not stack, and black rock ignores any other weapon proficiency, and shield ignores 1H proficiency.


4. Man of Iron
At the moment, each point seems to increase your poison resistance by 10% and nothing else. Is there supposed to be something else?

5. Willpower
What does this do? You act on your turn and can't be interrupted as far as I know, so what does this skill do?

6. Way of the Ranger
This should probably be renamed to Way of the Survivor, as this probably covers a lot of skills in this area, only one of which is actually ranger-specific.

7. Field Medic
Another "why would I ever take this" skill. Potions seem to be pretty cheap, there's a low-level healing spell, food items can heal you, and I haven't seen any medical kits. What does this skill do that all those other things can't?

8. Leadership
What does this do? It's unclear what bonuses it conveys. Related is the Warrior spell "inspire" that boosts something or other, but I have no idea what it does.


Talents

1. Gold Digger
It makes it easier to spot hidden gold? Does this mean it increases the gold you find in treasure chests, it spawns extra gold when wandering the world, gives you extra gold when selling things, or what?


2. Dress Rehersal
Maybe it's just that I'm still in the starter grounds, but at the moment, it seems like combat will have to be made a whole lot tougher before I'll be worried enough to consider switching my gear in mid-battle instead of fighting, running, or healing.


3. Talents are Generic/unimpressive
Most of the Talents are basically just booster packs for certain skills. Sure, that may be effective, but most aren't spectacular. At first glance, the really interesting ones are Pet Pal, Sixth Sense, and "Comback Kid" (sic).

It's also unclear how effective some of those Talents will be worth later on. Sure, at level 2 that 5 points of Offense from Gladiator might look sweet, but I'm not sure what those 5 points will still be worth at level 14.

Traits



I thought that the idea behind Traits was that they have both a benefit AND a Drawback. Right now, it seems like it's a choice between skill boost A or skill boost B. Is this another thing that isn't fully fleshed out yet? [s]Will we eventually see some of the ideas from the old thread?[/s] EDIT: Actually, after reading that, I think a lot of those are in there already.

Will we eventually be able to pick a starting trait or two in character generation?

For one, unarmed specialist is pretty useless. Tried having 10 unarmed skill points but I only have 2-4 damage. I'm role playing scarlett as a brute who has maximum speed/AP

Good catch, I forgot that. I've heard that at the moment, Unarmed is locked at power level level 1, regardless of actual points into it.

That's why. I have to restart the game then lol.

Has anyone used lockpicking yet? How does it work? I have 2 points in it, and when I try to open a locked door, nothing happens. It just says "locked"

Maybe you need tools for lockpicking? But i dont know either.

I posted this in my own thread aswell, but this seems to be the right place for it.

The Quick-witted talent, which gives 10 % more xp, seems to be a necessary talent. Given that this game has a finite amount of monsters, meaning a finite amount of xp, characters who take this skill will be at a 10 % higher level at the end. I'd recommend deleting the entire talent.

Fleetfooted and Rosy cheecks both have just about the same description. If there is a difference, this should be made clear. And if there isn't one, I'd recommend deleting one.


Intelligence governs how much ability points a character get each level. Since intelligence seems more important for a mage, this gives the mage a huge advantage. Being able to invest 3 points more each leven in for example fire spells, feels like a bit too much.
Combine the above point with the intelligence requirment on rings and amulets and I see no reason not to start with a mage.
So combine this with your point about speed and these two attributes seems to have a clear advantage.

All the figther skills cost 5 ap, with a 4 turn cooldown. A lot of spells cost 3 ap, with a 1 turn cooldown. This combined with some other things (listed below), made me feel like a mage is the much stronger class at the moment. Also, all these skills lack a (clear) description.

Quick-witted isn't the only issue. It seems that only the one who gives the killing blow to an enemy gets the XP, instead of splitting them.

Fleet-footed and Rosy-cheeked do the same thing, you're correct, but that alone is not a reason to delete one, as they each give you 1 AP, and those bonuses stack. That's a reason why someone would want to take both.

The way I inferred it there are 3 types of magic Offensive, Defensive and Summoning, and 4 elements. Battle Magic increases Offensive spells of all 4 elements while Fire Magic increases Offensive, Defensive and Summoning spells for Fire magic only.

Not to say a better explanation wouldn't help but it's a common problem with the way RPGs frontload character creation. Call me a heretic but I admire the way Skyrim deferred this kind of decision making.

Quick-Witted is one of those borderline cases. If there's enough xp in the game to hit max without it then it's arguably worthless. In addition xp is likely exponential (is there a table?) so 10% extra xp in most games amounts to sometimes a level sometimes not.

I took Fleetfooted and Rosy Cheeks because action points. I'd still recommend dropping one though, it seems a pretty uninteresting way to build a character.

Most of the talents are useless and the good talents are no brainers
20% extra hp or 1 point in some skilll.....or even the skill that gives 2 skillpoints ;s

Yeah, maybe, but it still seems kinda pointless to specialize. The vast majority of the spells are going to be battle spells, so going just for fire because there are one or two defense spells doesn't seem like a great trade-off compared to getting the ability to use all the elements with points in general Battle Magic. I do have an idea, though:

Maybe battle magic/ other magic would work something like this:

Skill X requires Fire Magic 3 to use, OR Battle Magic 6. Skill Y requires Water Magic 1 or Battle Magic 2. It’s the difference between a generalist and a specialist. Specialists can get those skills earlier, but generalists can use get skills from four schools at once.

I believe that would provide all the incentive you need for specializing in certain schools of magic instead of being a generalist.





I'm okay with dropping one, but if you do that, maybe increase the value of the remaining perk to 2 AP? Then again, maybe not: there should be a level cap, and so you can only get a certain number of Talent points. There's a difference between spending two Talent points to get two AP and spending one Talent point to get two AP.

IIRC it doesn't give an Action Point for every statpoint you put in it. I don't have code here though so I could be wrong.




Warrior, Ranger = levels up warrior, ranger skills. If you find a skillbook for instance that teaches you Splitting Arrows, and your Way of Ranger is zero, you cannot use it. If you have Way of Ranger at 1, it does skill level damage, has skill level one range, etc. Skill level affects all kinds of properties of skills.

Same goes for the earth/wind/fire/water abilities.

Battle Magic: Probably gonna ditch it along with defensive. The idea was to have an ability to be a generalist instead of a specialist.



We wanted to support unarmed combat, but it's not in yet properly.



No.



Resistance against charm, fear and interrupting spells. We wanna put skills in there that take time to "prepare". I.e. you cast now and will only actually "fire" next turn. This is not in alpha because there were issues with it so now all spells are set to "no prepare". We might keep it that way or use it for special (powerful) enemy attacks only. Depends.



Might go. Idea is that there are first aid kits and you can heal ppl with them. Seen as there are healing spells and potions and such, and some rules have changed, idea may have become deprecated.




Still gotta do those.

Does anyone know how to use the skill books that you buy? I bought the healing skill book and tried clicking it, dragging it, etc.. Nothing happens.

If everything is functioning as it should, right-clicking will 'consume' the book, and add its spell to your characters' library.

Thanks for the info, Forktong!




No you're correct on that, I was mistaken.



Being a generalist could actually work, as I posted above, give specialists earlier access to spells from their school. Battle Magic Generalists get spells from all schools, but at a slower rate (they need to spend more points).




I like the idea of having to prepare spells to fire the next turn. I like that a lot. That could be one way to help balance out warriors and mages: the mages most powerful spells require them to wait a turn to use.




Ah, okay.

To a certain extent you're pre-supposing that the Defensive Magic and Summoning Magic skills are under-powered. If Summoning and Defensive Magic are as good as Battle Magic (which they should be) then a Fire Mage can have 18 points in Fire Magic, while the generalist needs 6 points in each. If someone wants to be a Specialist Battle Mage he can have 18 points in Battle Magic but you should really miss access to those defensive and summoning spells, at least as much as access to different flavours of offensive magic.

The problem is I'm not sure if really gives you all that big an advantage. It doesn't immediately feel like you can really go pure Fire because if you meet a group of enemies that are fire immune then that character is useless. So you need to go Fire/Earth. In which case you are losing access to 2 elements for a 50% saving on skill points. That's okay I guess but given how integral the element shifting seems to be I'm not sure it's enough of an advantage. It could end up being a perceptual issue, and going purely into one element could be entirely viable on a second playthrough.

My assumption - which may be erroneous - is that there will be a lot more skills that fall under "battle magic" than there will be that fall under "defensive magic", and even more than those that fall under "summoning magic".

I admit that I was not considering an 18-Fire mage with a 6-Battle/6-Defensive/6-Summoning. I think that might be spreading yourself far too thin, just as maybe an 18-Fire mage would also have too narrow a focus. I was thinking of an 18-Fire versus an 18-Battle Magic.

At some point, I intend to experiment with a pair of dual-element wizards that together cover all the elements. (Whether I find the time to actually do that, I don't know.)




I can answer this now: The arrow shop in Cyseal sells Survivor skill books including Lockpick.

The commander of the Legion (Aureus?) sells Warrior skill books.

I did a test with a warrior customized to start with 10 Speed. It was not very effective. Sure, she got 3 more AP, but her chance of hitting enemies was ~20% less and very noticeable. She whiffed three times in a row on the level 1 crabs. So that's good at least that a pure speed build is not an easy win button.

I'm going to try out two generic standard warriors and see how well they do, and then I'll make an assessment of the overall combat difficulty.

Which reminds me: Is chargen still 5 points in every attribute and 5 points to assign?

Yes. I am assuming that in the final game there will eventually be fairly common permanent debuffs to attributes that enemies can inflict in you that you need to use potions and items to cure. Otherwise, I can't see there being a point to starting out with 5 unremovable points in everything.


Both of the ranger attack skills seem to do way too much damage, and the warrior ones don't do a lot. The Warrior's whirlwind skill in particular seems very inaccurate compared to a normal attack and has trouble hitting more than one enemy.

The Ranger's charm skill is also overpowered.

In fact the entire skill system in general is strange. You don't need to be X level to use a skill, you need to have X ability points into a certain ability to use a skill, and more ability points increase all your skills, leading to rapid increases in power.