Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta BETA 1.059 Skills/abilities change thread

The -AP idea is just an idea. It could be for something else. The -AP cost switching from primary attribute to skill-boosting ability could indeed be too big a bonus and we'd be back at the older system which made skill-boosting abilities too alluring.


Skills currently do take into effect a weapon-cost minimum, which is why if a Ranger switches from bow to Crossbow, the AP cost for their bow attack skills will go up by 2.

The bonus is not for normal attack weapon swings, it is for adjusting the AP costs of skills. This means that the current AP costs for skills will probably go up, and yes, there should be a minimum AP cost for skills which won't go down.

For example, say the AP cost for Crushing Fist is 6 to start out with, and its minimum cost has been set to 3 AP. Even if I have Man-At-Arms 5, and thus the -5 AP modifier, Crushing Fist will not cost 1 AP, it will cost 3 AP.

However, High-Level-Big-Attack, has base AP cost is 11 to start out with because it is high level and powerful. A character with Man-At-Arms 1 who meets the level/attribute requirements can still use this skill, and it will cost 11 AP. A character with Man-At-Arms 5 - someone who has specialized in Man-At-Arms - (and who meets the level/attribute requirements) will get the -5 AP bonus for specializing and so when they use that skill, it will cost them 6 AP. If they have 4 Man-At-Arms (-3 AP), that skill will go down from 11 AP to 8 AP.

The idea is that you can still use those skills if you're a generalist (req's permitting), but a specialist in that area will get more benefit.

It's not a perfect idea, certainly. One issue which potentially ruins the idea completely is that before, it was gated by having an odd number of points into a primary attribute lower the AP cost, and so it could take up to 4 character levels to lower the AP cost by 1.

So it could indeed be that lowering AP cost just won't work there.

Stabbey, that answer is just a bunch of declaratory statements based on your gut reaction of dislike, largely based on misunderstanding.



This is completely preposterous to say AND i did explain WHY only change X skills and WHY only once. It couldn't be more simpler then it is.

You may not like it but dont pretend and imply something preposterous to falsely construct a fake counter argument.



BECAUSE THIS IS JUST ONE PART OF THE WHOLE DEAL that i explained previously, which would actually solve these "problems" - which dont really exist in extent as they were presented by some posters.

This particular addition to your idea - is JUST A BLOODY ADDITION to it.

Allowing all learned skills and spells to be freely changed as many times as anyone wants IN A WAY THAT IS COMPLETELY UNCONNECTED TO ANY OTHER GAME MECHANIC OR FEATURE does directly create the effect that was the core of the complaints about this new system.

This is the direct cause of having... say a fighter with just one point invested in any magic elemental school of skills - and wielding the most powerful spells of that school a bit later in the game - which is now only gated by Int requirement.

If not the most powerful spells, then high level ones surely.

With just one single point invested in that skill type.

That fighter would be able to freely swap those three spells throughout the whole game. Which is preposterous.


And if you want to use the "freedom of experimentation" argument then why the hell dont we have that fing "freedom" to experiment with any type of magic and any type of weapon in the game without any bloody requirements or limits to it?

Why would i need to invest points ot get your bloody AP decrease then? Why not just have it for NOTHING? So i can experiment with my "freedom"?

DO I NEED TO WRITE EVERYTHING TWICE?


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... if i hate anything on the internet - while i havent even finished drinking my first morning coffee - then it is the custom of overblown accusations about some idea or suggestion one personally dislikes, instead of actually providing real counter arguments.

I know it is too late, but remove abilities. They are fucking messing everything. Keep skills and talents. Talents to special effects and specialization (+10% slashing, whatever), and as unlocking possibilities, like repairing, crafting, and so on. You can mimick abilities with talents (crafting 1 talent, crafting 2, and so on).
Give a little more talent points, organize talents so they are not this big messy blob of stuff (social talent, nature talent, melee talent, magic talent, for example...) that is painfull to go through.
Skills and talents. Attributes based use.
And yes, maybe you would have had to add a few attributes , that would have made sense to define a character, maybe a few more mental ones (charisma ? willpower ? instead of having them as abilities, ). But I fear it is too late.

Or add perks. So we could have:
Attributes, abilities, skills, talents, traits, and perks.

And advantages. Yes, I think we really miss advantages here, so we could have:
Attributes, abilities, skills, talents, traits, perks and advantages.

Playing on with this new system, another unintended negative consequence started to appear more and more.
It is a direct result of the new mechanic of being able to switch learned skills freely and the change of what exact effects raising skills such as master of Arms, elemental magic, Expert Amrksman and other in that group have in this new setup.

And its not anything i influence myself, or want. It just forms... naturally, from the system as it is.

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Because all these skills now simply open more slots in specific skill category - while i can change learned skills in those slots freely, whenever i want or feel like it - there is actually no incentive to invest more then 3 points altogether in any category.

1 at the start and 2 more to bring it to the next level, which brings that skill to level 2 and opens five slots which you can use for different spells or abilities - learned from the books.

After that, i can just change spells or abilities whenever i want, therefore there is practically no need to invest more points into that category.

- I have noticed that some talents require specific amounts of levels in these skills to open up. Thats good.

I noticed that expert marksman raised to level 5 will open up a talent that reduced AP cost of bows.
Thats great.

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Of course, in the beta i cannot achieve any of those high requirements. Which seem too high anyway, or not applied in the best way, or at all. There should be more of such additional talents opening up depending on investments in skills - and other features and benefits added to the skills themselves.

To make it actually worthy to invest in any of them. Right now, i usually have spare points and no incentive to spend them on anything. Increasing damage by 10% isnt that important in the game.
Only maybe increasing bodybuilding makes some sense since that makes my saves versus knockdowns, disease, crippled and such status effects better.

Maybe the shield skill but only if im a shield user...

While crafting and other such personal skills have flavor effects in the game and aren't really necessary at all - at this point.

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As i said above, the new "change learned spells and skills freely" mechanic should be changed into a more limited, constrained form (which would then increase depending on investment of points or level of characters or other mechanics already in the system)

Its actually not working well.




- edit -

A correction.

I haven't so far even used that feature, simply because in the beta, you never get so many spells or skill that you would need large number of slots open - and all those spells and skills are not that useful that you would need to switch between them.

You usually just choose a few most valuable and powerful ones and thats it.

The thing is that with this system you actually forget the skill when you remove it.

I first thought it somehow remains in some pool or a list and that you can just put it back later on if you want.
While in fact it is gone, completely forgotten and you need to buy that same skill book to learn it again. If you want to.


Which is not very likely, actually. And there isnt so many useful skills that you would want, or so many skills in the beta, where we are limited to level 10.

So, having five slots open at level 2 is more then enough all the same. and it is quite easy to find the same skill book anyway. So ... this wouldnt matter much even in the full game.

When I was at Larian they mentioned it would probably change again since the current system has some pretty dire and unintended side-effects...

Yeah? Nice to hear that.

A pretty solid idea in my book. It adds a new requirement for using skills at their best. First a character needs to learn a new skill (which basically means having the skill book and the required level), then he has to invest some points in the relative stat and the relative "way of", otherwise the skill in question will be underpowered and too costly AP-wise.
Maybe overcomplicated, but it could work.

I have to say that I love this idea. I think it's way better than the current skill system.