Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Opinion: Hybrid characters are no good

Hey all,

I've spent nearly 100 hours in the beta so far. I'm addicted to this game!

Just some thoughts on hybrid characters since the patch that changed skills to directly be affected by stats. Playing both before and after this patch, my conclusion is that hybrid characters are now useless when compared to non-hybrid characters. Perhaps useless is too strong of a word, but "not nearly as effective" would be accurate.

I do agree that before hybrid characters were overpowered - my Battlemage was a boss at melee and all the schools of magic. But now they are nerfed to the point where I don't see the use of them.

The skill penalties for doing a hybrid character (other than ranger/rogue who share Dexterity based skills) are massive. In the first few levels this isn't that noticeable, as getting 8 into a primary stat isn't that hard. But the next round of skills starts at stat 10. Lets take a battlemage for example. how are you going to maintain 10 int & 10 strength evenly all the time so you don't get penalties? I think you could, but by the time you do you'll have hit the next range of skills/spells then run into the same problem.

Then we have the skill penalty issue. I believe this is great for balancing - having no penalty on skill level for magic was an issue. But between the -20% effectiveness of skills or extra 2-3AP to use a skill, I don't see how hybrid characters are worthwhile vs a straight up mage, warrior, ranger, etc who not only get no penalties, but get skill boosts for high stats.

For example the wayfarer preset class is witch + rogue (I think.) In either case you start with only 7 dexterity. This gives you a 90% chance to cast your haste since you have a -10% penalty for low dexterity. My first fight I go to cast this, it "fumbles" since it has a 10% chance to fail. Maybe not such a big deal on low cd spells, but haste has a 20 turn cool down. So you either get it right, or don't use it in a fight at all. Of course you'll quickly get a point into dexterity making that particular spell fine, but the next range of spells will all have dex penalties if you focus on int, or vice versa.

Another example: The battlemage starts with both low int AND low str, so all her spells have penalties. I love that hybrid class the best (as an idea) but in practice it is no longer effective.

Just my thoughts. I know in traditional D&D you have penalties for hybrid characters. But this somehow seems too severe. I don't know what the solution is, other than giving you more stat points to spend. But that leads to other balance problems I guess.

What does everyone else think?