Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Sneak 5 balancing discussion thread

I agree about the sneaking items. With cautious trait, 1-2 points spent, and a few sneak items (head+feet seem most common for sneak) you can reach sneak 5 in the very early game no problem. But I still think sneak is a balance issue.

This isn't at all about guerrilla damage(I think 1 AP sneak attacks in combat are fine), it's about enemy AI usually not doing anything about the player's party ending a round in stealth. This is especially for ranged characters such as mage/marksman, where it's easy to keep out of sight cones perpetually.

The AI needs to do more than sit around dumbfounded skipping their turn or trying to heal themselves through the damage. They should be moving towards the last spot they saw a character stealth, or tossing an AoE effect in that area. Sneak would still be strong for avoiding direct targeting and forcing the AI to waste AP on things like that.

The problem isn't that sneak level 5 is powerful.
It's that it's more powerful than anything else in the game, by far.

Imagine if getting level 5 telekinesis allowed you to fly above the battlefield, making enemies completely unable to attack you. That would be broken OP, right? That's basically what Sneak 5 is like.

Or imagine if Bartering 5 made all the vendors give you anything you want for free. That would negatively impact the game, because now there's no sense of value to any of the loot. That's what Sneak 5 does to combat.

Oh okay. I hadn't thought about its defensive applications, especially when adopted by every single party member.

The issue here is that the enemies in this game are very bad at dealing with "yellow light" situations. They can switch between "green" (nothing to worry about) and "red" (enemy spotted, time to engage) very well, but can't deal with situations in the middle (we can't see any enemies this instant, but they were just here a second ago).

Honestly, I think the game should be pretty unforgiving on players trying to sneak with an entire party. The first thing I'd have monsters in "yellow" mode do is a little 3AP-or-less maneuver I like to call the Square Dance:

Now obviously you're not going to maintain your sneak within 12m or so of the monsters if they start using this on you. Which would mean you'd need to keep them distracted with other characters who are not sneaking; as long as they don't feel suddenly alone, they don't square dance. And that's fine, you should still be able to use Sneaking to shift monster focus off of certain characters and onto more dedicated tanks and such. What you shouldn't be able to do is have the entire party go "invisible" with ease by having everyone invest in sneaking.

I dunno, sometimes enemies attack my sneaking character for no reason even if they don't have vision.

Also, if you think sneak 5 is OP, try sneak 6+. They literally can't see anything further than their noses. Glass cannon + invisibility is similarly OP.

To fix this, attacking or using a skill could give characters a -5 sneak penalty until the end of their turn. That would make it harder to pop in to hiding on the same turn that an attack was made.

In any case, Sneaking itself should probably cost quite a lot of AP. I realize that hinders "true Rogues" somewhat. There may need to be a Talent to counteract it, but only available at lvl 5 Scoundrel.

That's the other problem, Sneaking has a definite "5 or bust" syndrome to it. There is no possible way to make a 4AP Sneak balance while also allowing a 1AP Sneak to be balanced.

I think the role of the ability and the role of the talent should be switched. Such as...
Sneaking (Skill): Now costs 3AP as a base.
Sneaking (Ability): Adds 30% damage to attacks made while sneaking per rank. Does not decrease AP cost of Sneaking anymore. Renamed to something more appropriate.
Guerilla (Talent): Now reduces the AP cost of Sneaking by 1 (to 2AP). No longer increases the damage of attacks. Renamed to something more appropriate. Might have a higher prerequisite (ex: Sneaking 5).

I like your ideas, Scrotie, but with those numbers sneak-attacks would only be AP efficient at Sneaking level 4 (with Guerilla) or 5 (without).

Honestly I would just say
Sneaking costs 1AP
Sneak Ability: reduces enemy vision angle & gives +10% attack bonus from Stealth, per rank
Guerilla : grants +50% attack bonus from Stealth, with daggers

As long as enemy AI is changed so that they look around when they can't find any player characters, I think that would solve the issues. It would make sneak attacking viable from level 1, for rogues. It would prohibit the slower weapons (2-handers and bows) from getting the full awesome benefits of sneak attacking, while still granting them extra damage and making even 1 or 2 points in Sneaking useful in combat.

In order to have sneaking reduce the enemy vision angle, you'd have to have different colored zones (ex: Sneaking 5 is okay in this area of the cone, but Sneaking 2 isn't). That's a huge UI change and not a viable suggestion, for development costs alone.

If 30% per rank isn't enough, it could be increased. Now that I think about it, the primary purpose of early points in Sneaking should be unlocking Sneaking-based Talents (such as reducing the cost or giving you full movement speed while sneaking), with the latter points finally making sneaking cost-effective as a damage multiplier in combat.

Sneaking already reduces enemy vision angle. Currently, the higher your Sneak ability, the narrower the enemy's vision angle is, for detection. My only change was
1) eliminate the AP scaling, since it makes sneak worthless unless you fully spec into it
2) give it some damage scaling, to give combat incentive for leveling it



The problem with this is that it makes Sneaking worthless in combat until you hit higher ranks of it. Ideally, it would start out 'okay' and then get better and better the more you spec into it.

@ScrotieMcB
Congratz for this explanation/point of view that I 100% agree on.

One question though, does the Walk in Shadows (Scoundrel skill) work with Guerilla as well?

I think it might be fixed if:-

1) it were not possible to end your turn in stealth without using a power such as walk in shadows or an invisibility potion, or AT LEAST using tactical retreat to a totally dark area. Those all use up APs.
2) Maybe you should retain your backstab bonus on the same foe for a single round (ie. you can't re-stealth but you can take a single guy down probably all the way).

I don't believe so, but I'm not sure. Walk in Shadows makes you invisible, not stealthed. Though it does kind of seem like there should be some synergy there.


This makes sense to me. First attack from stealth 'marks' the target, and then for the rest of that turn you get bonus damage against them.

I would argue that glass cannon is as powerful. A rogue with 8 AP and 5 sneak isn't so terribly broken. A rogue with 16 AP and 5 sneak, on the other hand, yeah it can seem pretty rediculous. I personally created a rogue just to do this and until glass cannon, it's not so great. It would be easy to fix with a cooldown of one sneak per round though, so you can't dump 15 AP to kill a boss before it gets a turn.

I completely agree that Glass Cannon is OP. I think it would be more balanced as a flat +4AP per turn while reducing your HP by 50%, but that's a different thread.

I think the ramp up of difficulty in tactical games is usually to slow, in this case it starts off incredibly slow but becomes too easy. Still, I do feel like NOT save scumming equipment would negate this feeling of content not being challenging enough.

I understand you can purchase many of those items at the vendors or craft equipment comparable to blues of a similar level.

Glass cannon doesn't feel TOO strong for me on hard. Even with leach my warrior goes down, and CC still owns my bacon even though I am heavily investing in willpower and bodybuilding. My mage could probably survive XXX turns by spamming invisibility, but if my entire party got wiped I wouldn't spend 16 turns trying to wipe the enemies out single handedly.

If I F5 F8 for scum-chesting and scum-saves of course it's going to become trivial. But what if I wasn't doing that?

If Larian based everything in the game off of people save scumming then you would struggle to succeed in the game WITHOUT doing it. They'd be taking the decision making out of your hands to do this or that and simply tell you to do X.

I don't think we're praising this game because it has the most interesting story, or is arbitrarily the hardest game ever (LONG WAR XCOM SERIOUSLY). Personally, if I can blow up a gas cloud, if I can create a rain cloud and shock it to create a lightning cloud, if I can teleport the enemy caster into my party for a melee - I'm just excited that I can do that.

In a way what I am hearing from everybody who is complaining about sneak 5, leach, and 100% resistance is that they found a way to win most fights absolutely. So what. In all of the BG and Icewind Dale games, you could win just about any fight with a decent ranged team and Summoning 1 and Summoning 2. You had other options, of course, but there were always fairly surefire ways to win a fight.

You still have these options in D:OS. You can use sneak and telekinesis to move barrels around toward enemies. You can have strength heroes carry them and use mage teleport to open up with them. You can have two archers who specialize to frontload damage (guerilla, witchraft, marksmanship, scoundrel with crossbow) and abuse it all day. You could create the dragon knight, who is sort of a fairly low int battle mage who can jump into battle and cast explode to heal himself by utilizing the over 100% resistance rule. You could run a party of four mages (make sure you get the undead and wolf summon for anti element creatures) and abuse the summoning schools, and a number of strong abilities and combos (they can also abuse elemental shields, for damage mitigation, even on hard mode with glass cannon). You could go lone wolves and manage to survive through scrolls and safe play to the point where you get glass cannon and run a rogue/mage combo and abuse sneak 5 to just kill enemies without them being able to react.

And any build is going to be the least nominal at X point in the game and the most nominal at Y point in the game. Why build a late game character if you won't enjoy the early, why metagame if you're looking for a challenge?

Will this game inevitably be tweaked and modded into an even better game? Absolutely! But don't complain about a gem because it has a smudge on it after you have touched it.

You do realize that you can arguably do more damage with telekinesis per action point than almost anything else in the game?

Not even making that up. You can straight murder people via telekinesis in combat.

eh, my 2 lone-wolf glass-cannon mages could use invisibility to end every turn and 99% of the enemies just stand there and die. however, being honest about it, its completely not needed. they destroy everything the game throws at them without bothering.

i tried it for a little while to just abuse the idiotic mechanics, but it really just slowed things down. the only fights that are even remotely challenging for them are the big end bosses and most of those can be cheesed with positioning or simply having ridiculously better movement than the boss.

the bottom line is it doesnt matter if they nerf one thing, there are multiple ways to abuse the fight mechanics and completely wreck the enemies without them being able to do much about it.

i wont use names, because i dont want to spoil anything, but just take the cysael big final boss battle. if you run back through the door, drop an oil slick or some fire on the ground at the doorway, then the enemies will never even try to get through. they just stand on the other side afraid of the environmental effects. its like shooting fish in a barrel.

even if that didnt work, glass cannon+movement gear means i can kite the enemies infinitely forcing them to use their AP and never get to attack.


it doesnt matter how much people pine for nerfs in a 1-player game, or what they change. I will always be able to find some way to completely abuse the combat mechanics of this game. They would have to completely re-work the entire system from the ground up, which is just not realistic.

@michaelmarler
I agree with about 90% of everything you said, and I know that savescumming is my own problem and my own fault ... but that's kind of beside the point.

also re: Telekinesis OP
The problem isn't that sneak is some niche strategy that you need to go out of your way to discover. It's a bread-and-butter skill for one of the main classes in the game. I feel like when one of the MAIN combat related skills is that broken, you can't fault people for complaining.

@MrFritz
I disagree that they would need a complete overhaul to balance the game. I think there's about 10 things (or less) that would essentially fix combat.
Off the top of my head if they did
-glass cannon rebalance
-leech rework
-tenebrium skill rework
-sneak rework
-limit resistances (or rework the way that healing from resistance works)
then the combat would be WAY more balanced.

(note: I don't think Tenebrium skill is unbalanced, I just think it's dumb)

Good post, michael.

Almost all of my forum fishing has been to generate a good basis for things to avoid taking advantage of. I was under the impression that this game was a BEAUTY, and it is! But any gamer knows there is going to be at least one method of cheese to cheat any system with. I remember my first go around with Ogre Battle 64 when I had only one overpowered unit that I used to clear all enemies with. Then I remember the gratification of using my entire army (more units, all weaker = more strategy required = more failed attempts = more learning = more gratification)

Tiny amounts of self-regulation can really increase gratification and re-playability. Any system can(and will)be cheated, even RL finance and court systems are duped regularly.

I ended up rolling a 3-man party and gave myself some rules, some arguable but I new & am trying to go overboard in the spirit of keeping my gratification meter high and my combat frustrating, but still possible. The comments I have read about the backwards scaling of difficulty are a big turn-off to me, even though the story is super amazing. It is the difference between 100 hours played for the story, and 600 hours played for 'the game.'

-Hardmode
-No Reloads for loot containers, smells like cheese
-No Stealth. Enemy AI issues, personal preference.
-No Glass Cannon, OP?
-No Leech, OP?
-No Weather the Storm, OP?
-No Comeback Kid, OP?
-No Henchman Crafting Bot, smells like cheese
-No Cain, OP?
-Restrict Teleport and other select spells to one char only. I want strategic wildcards, not spam.

I would much rather be forced to re-roll 30 hours in because my party can't handle it - rather than lose interest in the game due to a lack of combat gratification.

It was the same thing for Skyrim. Wonderful game. Great story. But it began to get boring despite it's gifts due to the combat. I played maybe 50 hours of vanilla Skyrim, plus another 300 that would have never have happened without mods or self-regulations. There was a point when my only viable build was a paladin build due to the ridiculous difficulty I had modded into the game - but holy crap was it fun. If I didn't have my shield raised against a 2h enemy I was one-shot. Unless stoneskin, then I was two-shot but could try to kite and spam dual-wield heal to regen health and stam as I was being chased by Death. LOVED IT.

Hey, just my 2 cents...
I don't think that Comeback Kid is OP unless you combine it with Leech. I actually think it's perfectly balanced by itself.

Weather the Storm got hard nerfed, and is no longer as OP as it used to be. Seems very good, but not OP to me.

Similarly, Henchman crafting isn't really something I think is cheesy. You can just as easily make one of your main characters a crafter, it's just that Jahan is ideally suited to it. Crafting itself is powerful, but it feels appropriately powerful. Not OP.

Your mileage may vary, but I don't think those things necessarily need to be avoided.