Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Big problems with elemental surface damage.

The most logical way to deal with surfaces, which I can imagine is this one:

The more time u spend on a fire surface, the more damage u get - if I stay in fire I should get more damage every second. If I move through fire I also it also takes me some time in fire, that means, I also should take some damage every second I'm burning. That's intuitive.

Every AP point is a symbol of a time unit. If I spend my action points on moving through the surface, I should take damage. If I move through fire, and my move takes me overall 5 seconds it's the same amount of damage as if I stayed 5 seconds in fire while doing something else (or doing nothing). So taking damage while moving through fire is intuitive. What's not intuitive is not taking damage while staying in fire, or using spells, abilities etc. in fire.

What should in fact be implemented, is damage from the surfaces like fire, while spending AP points on abilities while being on a fire surface and not just on moving through the surfaces.

If I move through the surface, it takes me 5 seconds = 5 AP, I should take the same amount of damage as if I cast a spell for 5 AP = 5 seconds in a surface.

The burning status itself should also triger damage when one moves out of a surface, because you burn for a time, when you move out of a burning surface.
For example it should punish you for using your AP points even if you aren't anymore on the burning surface. Because AP points are time, and if u spend some time burning... you take damage.
But it should punish you less... because you're only burning, and not burning and standing on the burning surface....

It's the most intuitive way to apply burning in a turn based combat in my humble opinion.


The problem occurs when we ask: "And what with the saved action points for the next turn?".

Well.... for me the easiest solution is just to interpret those pionts as always... if u save points for the next turn, u didn't use any action points... u don't take damage, because you didn't spend your time in fire (AP = time) - not yet... u just... hmmm moved yourself a little bit in time with your turn. But if u waste your points, by saving too much points than you can, you should get punished for it e.g.: If you have a maximum of 13 AP to store and in every turn you can get 7 AP, and you have already stored the maximum 13 AP point, and you click "Next Turn" button, then you should be punished for every wasted point... so in this example for 7 AP points that u waste just by standing in the surface, because those are those "overstored" points that were just wasted in the surface while doing nothing.
So standing in a surface counts only as a standing... if you really waste AP points in that way, that you can no longer use them in other ways, only then we can literally say about standing in fire and doing nothing - wasting your time in fire.

That's the most logic, intuitive, and the easiest to implement way of dealing with that problem that I can imagine (sorry for my English).

Of course after the end of combat , and getting out of a turn mode, everything should act normally as damage over time effect. That means based on the real time.