Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Creating an incentive for magic specialization

"Here are the reasons why the old system was changed, tom8a:

Massive Change to the Skill System

Your simple change basically will create three tiers of power:
Low Attribute Score + Low Ability Score = low-powered skill.
High Attribute Score + Low Ability Score (or vice-versa) = medium-powered skill
High Attribute Score + High Ability Score = high-powered skill

That's for each skill. Larian would have to balance the power of a skill three times over. There are 134 skills in the game."

Low + low combination will not adversely affect balance as this will not significantly affect the power of a skill and starting skill powers are already balanced.

High + low combination would indeed produce a medium powered skill. This would not be difficult to balance. A modifier for Attribute score is already included as a balanced part of the game. It should not be difficult to apply a little maths to produce an Ability / Attribute equivalency. This would allow players to achieve the same power at the same level but through different paths of development.

High Attribute Score + High Ability Score = high-powered skill. This is a problem. It would produce overly powerful characters. It would also produce very one dimensional characters. So although powerful in some respects they would be particularly weak in others. I have not played far enough into the game to discover if this would be a sufficient deterrent to over-specialization. From the many and varied ways to die that I have experienced so far, I am, however, inclined to believe that it would be.