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

Sorry but i have to disaggree here. The skill system that is in place doesn't encourage you to "pick the skills you want". The current system is trivial i the way that you will be able to learn/use any skill that you can with your stats.

The specialisation in the current class system is done by putting "points" into "attributes" that you hope will give you access to the skills you want. You want better ice magic? Yeah i put my points into the ice magic attribute.

All of this results in players who have to deal with points spending while they have to know what these points will give them. Which is crap, because in the end this is a complex mathematical problem to solve. Which is better now 2 points into attrbute A or 2 points in attribute B?

The better system is to give people choices which they can make without being a scientist and leave the math in the background.

What people want is build a character that fits their taste and for this a "point and attribute based" System isnt good.

Yes and no. Now when i spend a lot of skill points into one thing like fire magic, but i cannot find the best fire spells but find air and water spells all the time, then it will be very frustrating.

In addition i have following problems with the current system:
1. When you want to have an super ice spell which requires you to have 50 ice magic, then you automatically losing those points for lets say the fire magic spell that you also wanted.

2. Now the thing here is, with ice magic 50 you can get any ice spell with less requirement then that.

3. Now lets say i want to have the skill "Ice Blade" which gives your melee weapon an enchant. Then you could get ALL ICE SPELLS with lower ice magic requirements that you probably dont want, because they are ranged or whatever. While in a talent tree based system you may pick only the melee based ice spells if they were in a single branch.

Generally spoken
The thing i would suggest is to reduce the attributes by a lot. All these attributes and talents for what are they really good? The are just an distraction from the role playing, fighting, exporing and puzzel solving.

You know i dont have a problem with a attribute system when it makes sense, but in this game it's really like there is no system. Just a lot of attributes and telents for the attributes and talents sake.

Lets take a look at the most successful Roleplaying games of the last years:

Dragon Age has talent trees that are supportet by basic attributes. A very good system imho. It lets the player get the skills he wants while being complex enough to leave some room for the number crunchers.


Border Lands 2 and Diablo 2, they are both using a very similar system. Basic Stats + Talent trees.


World of warcraft, talent trees + glyphsystem + stats


Later blizzard figured out that talent trees are too limited and they wanted to make an more flexible system


Shadow run


Beyond Divinity, basic attributes, spells are acquired with books?


Divinity II Skills are grouped into 'schools' which correspond to traditional roles, but all skills are available to all characters, allowing mixing between these roles.


To sum it up all of these games had designers who found ways to make developing an character more appealing. The presentation of this core element in DD:O is like its not even there.