Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Suggestions for New Talents to add to the game

Jailbreaker
Prerequisites: Lockpicking 1
You do not require a lockpick to pick a lock. Gives you a +1 bonus to Lockpicking while using a lockpick.

Mind Over Matter
Prerequisites: None
Gives you 2 bonus points in Telekinesis but you lose a point in Strength.

Savour the Moment
Prerequisites: None
Incompatible with: Walk it Off
All statuses on you (including negative ones) last an additional turn.

Soul Harvest
Prerequisites: Witchcraft 5
When reduced to 0 Vitality, take the Vitality of the nearest friendly character within Sight (killing them) instead of dying yourself.

Walking Almanac
Prerequisites: None
Gives you a +2 Loremaster bonus for identifying enemies.

Feel free to comment on mine or add your own.

Change log

More suggested talents:

Head Start
Prerequisites: Level 3
You get 3 additional Starting Action Points, but one less Recovery Action Point for rounds after the first.
Original idea by: dirigible

Hmm jailbreaker sounds nice. but in my opinion needs a higher prerequisite.

Mind over matter sounds pretty nice

Simulacrum (maybe a different name but thats probably because i never heard of "simulacrum")
Pretty nice mage alternative for comeback kid

Walking almanac. i'd suggest a perception prerequisite on it like maybe 10 perception? or 8.

Eh, I'm sure the weapons skill can get some love.

Shield Expertise - Req: Shield Lv 3
Your shield is no longer limited to defense.
You have mastered the Shield Bash Skill. AP3 - 3 metre - 100% Stun. 3 turn cooldown.


Master of Defense - Req: Shield Lv 5
Your mastery of the Shield fighting is unmatched - whenever you block a melee attack, you perform a counter attack with your primary weapon. Arrow and Spells can also be reflected.


Sundering Blows - Req: Two-Handed Lv 3
Your swing is strong enough to sunder even the toughest armor.
You have mastered the Sunder Armor Skill. AP5 - 3 metre - Reduced enemy armor. 5 turn cooldown.

Devastator - Req: Two-handed Lv 5
Your blows devastate anything before you. Two handed weapons gain 20% damage bonus and 10% critical chance. Every strike also has 50% chance of removing a beneficial spell from your enemy.


The Hedgehog - Req: Armor Mastery Lv 3
It hurt whenever your foes hit you - reflect 20% melee damage back to the attacker and causes two turn of bleed. You gain 10% more Armor and Resist All.


The Ironman - Req: Armor Mastery Lv 5
Your armor is like second skin - the training has paid off. Movement penalty is removed completely, you gain 25% Max HP from enduring all those damage taken.

Considering lockpicking is mostly worthless plus picks are cheap enough, I don't think anyone would spend a talent on Jailbreaker.

Mind Over Matter seems like a solid enough and fun one.

Simulacrum seems way overpowered. I believe you could almost never die with smart use of it. I like the idea of a talent focused on summons though. Perhaps something simple like summons get double leadership bonus from the character that summons them.

For Walking Almanac I'd also give a small crit bonus for your party(understanding enemy anatomy and whatnot).



Seems like a good way to ensure the talent never gets taken.

I'm really not a fan of talents which grant actual Skills (with a capital S).

That said, I do like the idea of a talents for the Shield Specialist and Armour Specialist Abiltiies (with a capital A). I think the counterattack one ("Master of Defense," although "Parry" would be a much better name) would work fine if it was limited to countering melee attacks only; it would still be something very cool and usable.

Probably should be something for Armour Mastery as well, but I don't think you've found it.With Jailbreaker, I'm not saying "this talent is the solution to Lockpicking scaling, everything is fixed now." Instead, I'm saying "I think this would be a cool thing after something else fixes Lockpicking scaling." A lot of the motivation is roleplaying; if you do get arrested, the talent really would make it easier to just walk out of jail (although you'd still need to sneak past the guards).

With Simulacrum, there's a reason I added the "cannot summon new summons" clause. It should be implemented such that you must get your Vitality above 0 before your summon dies or expires. Otherwise, yes, I'd agree with you.

interesting suggestions

I would appreciate a talent that reduces or removes the AP cost for swapping weapons. Quick Pockets maybe?

I would change Simulacrum to "When an attack would kill you the damage is transferred to your summoned creature"

That way you couldn't just make a melee combat character and summon something far away from the battle for an easy god mode.

Hmm.

In the OP, I changed the core mechanic behind Simulacrum (but not its intent) and renamed it Soul Harvest. The new version strongly encourages you to keep your summon (or a charmed enemy, I guess) nearby.

Also added Savour the Moment.

edit: Added "within Sight" to Soul Harvest, to prevent weird cases involving party splits. This also means Blind turns it off.

Symbiote (or Sympath)
Prerequisites: None
25% damage to summoner is transferred to summoned creature (and vice versa).

Gatherer (there's probably a better name for it).
Prerequisites: Lucky 1
Incompatible with: Gold Digger
You are more likely to find ingredients, but you no longer find any equipment.

Gold Digger
Prerequisites: Lucky 1
Incompatible with: Gatherer
You are more likely to find gold, but you no longer find any ingredients.

Focused
Prerequisites: None
AOE spells are 50% more effective, but 50% less radius.

Nobody Has As Many Friends
Prerequisites: None
Attitude towards character is increased by 25 points when gifting cheese.

It's perfect.


Head Start
Gain +5 starting AP.

Inconspicuous
Gain +40% chance to evade Attacks of Opportunity.

Warlock
Each rank of Aerothurge/Pyrokinetics/Geomancy/Hydrosophist/Witchcraft increases your weapon attack damage by 4%.

Iron Fist
Unarmed attacks have an 80% chance to Stun.

Introvert
Removes the modifiers from personality Traits, but grants +1 Ability point per level.

Symbiote: I had a very similar idea in the OP. The problem is people starting combat with a summon and then keeping the summon alive but not in the battle. It would need a redesign to fix this problem, and I think it's something Soul Harvest already does better anyway.

Gatherer/Golddigger: One of the things you can't Lucky Find, actually, is ingredients. It never happens on any rank of Lucky Charm; just arrows, scrolls, gold, finery (ex: golden cups), and gear. As such, the ingredient focus of these talents feels very out-of-place.

Focused: The game has far more area spells than you might think. Every single spell which can target ground or clouds for an effect is an area spell, even if the area is so small that it can normally only affect one enemy -- Blitz Bolt, Magical Poison Dart, and Flare are all area spells. This talent would be far too good for those, since the reduced area wouldn't be much of a drawback. I don't think there's any good way to make a talent which reduces radius as a drawback, although you might be able to make a decent talent from one which reduces range as a drawback (requiring you to be closer to enemies).

Nobody Has As Many Friends: Decent joke. Horrible talent.Head Start: This is equivalent to +10 Perception for the purpose of starting AP. Way, way, way too powerful. +1 starting AP (equivalent of 2 Perc for casters who don't benefit from the crit chance or other aspects of Perc) would be the appropriate power level. Remember that the default for a talent would be +1 to an attribute, so a limited-utility +2 to an attribute is a fine talent.

Inconspicuous: Interesting. Not really sure how much of a bonus against attacks of opportunity this should provide. One could make the argument for removing the chance completely; one talent gives you the chance to make attacks of opportunity, another talent cancels out the first talent. I'd prefer that, because it would also mean those characters couldn't "soak" attacks of opportunity with a talent called Inconspicuous; AoOs are limited to one per round, so you might want or not want tanking. There's definitely a potential talent in here somewhere.

Warlock: Really don't like this one. Spellcasting abilities are good enough as is.

Iron Fist: Actually hideously overpowered. I don't know how much unarmed fighting you've tried, but unarmed costs 2AP per instance, and each instance delivers 3 blows (might be different holding a shield, haven't tried). With an 80% chance to stun, what that works out to is a 2AP ability with 0 cooldown and a 99.2% chance to stun and a much better chance at getting through Willpower saves. Compare that to perfectly usable skills such as Shocking/Freezing/Petrifying Touch.

Introvert: Another very OP suggestion. An extra point per level is most like 20 ability points. It takes 5 ability points to take a skill from rank 4 to rank 5 (assuming no ability-boosting gear is involved). There are essentially zero instances where a player can line up 4 different abilities to go from rank 4 to rank 5 off of traits, which would be a 20-point equivalent. Remember that the baseline for a talent is to give 2 ability points (All Skilled Up), so in order to justify a talent which gives 20 ability points, you need to take away 18 ability points worth of goodness, and traits, while nice, just aren't worth quite that much. Plus, +1 ability point per level is already a Lone Wolf thing.

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Adding a fixed version of Head Start to second post in this thread (for some reason it won't let me edit the OP anymore).

I was thinking of some hybrid talents:

Ice King: Your melee attacks deal 10% extra damage as frost damage.
^(Same one for each element too) Req: 5/5 spell school

Battlemage: Your spells now use STR to determine fail/success.
^(Same one for dex too) Req: level 5

(in my defense)
Head Start - a flat bonus of 5 AP per fight really isn't that much. It would let most character use one extra ability, or attack one extra time, once per fight. The value of Perception, imo, has never been the starting AP change (which is negligible in the long run), but rather spotting secrets and increasing range of bows.
Inconspicuous - I felt that the ability to completely negate attacks of opportunity was a bit much. Even so, 40% EXTRA chance of dodging them is pretty good. It's essentially the same as equipping them with a very good shield.
Warlock - The intention was to incentivize hybrid str/magic builds, which I currently feel are underpowered. You're right, though, making magic even more powerful isn't really the answer.
Iron Fist - you're forgetting that unarmed attacks do not have Offense scaling, making you DRASTICALLY less likely to hit with them. That 98% chance to stun is more like a 15% chance, unless the enemy is already cc'd.
Introvert - might be unbalanced, but certainly no more than Glass Canon. Yes, you get 20 extra ability points (slowly, over the course of the game), but you also lose access to tons of immunities (charm, fear, etc), bonuses (crit, backstab) and ability ranks, as a result. It would make the early part of the game rougher, and the later part of the game easier.

I would agree to this if it gets renamed to "Muscle Wizard".

http://lolbot.net/pix/27027.jpg
The mustache is even in the game already.

I'm a big fan of unarmed and would really like to see it somewhere, so I'd say:

Monk
Unarmed attacks deal additional damage dependent on gauntlets and boots armour rating. Enchanted gauntlets and boots may trigger effects on hit.

Requires: 3 Willpower and 3 Bodybuilding

Rambling:



Basic formula:



Pros:
Potentially huge proc chances
Low AP cost
No weapons being damaged
Characters with high armour specialist get bonus damage(?)
Huge chance to proc looking like a mother******* badass as you karate your foes to death

Cons:
Expensive to add proc effects (Them expensive essences)
Can't add secondary damage effects
Gauntlets being damaged by hits instead of weapons
Requires 3 Willpower and 3 Bodybuilding - 12 points that could go elsewhere
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... well , that was going to be a simple suggestion, but I guess I kinda flew off with it. I'd make a mod for it myself if I knew how to script.

Head Start: You are actually out of your mind if you think +5 starting AP is anywhere near balanced.

As an example: Quickdraw. Widely considered to be one of the best talents in the game, and with good reason. What this does is that it essentially grants you 4AP (less than 5), but sets requirements for how to get it (you need to spend 12AP on normal attacks -- not special arrows, not skills, just normal attacks), then specifies how you can spend that extra 4AP -- again, not special arrows or skills, just normal attacks. And it's almost impossible to unlock the first turn of combat. Even with a mountainous prereq of Marksman 5, Quickdraw would be hideously underpowered compared to a +5 starting AP talent which you can use on anything.

+1 starting, straight-up, would be balanced for a talent with no prereq. +3 starting and -1 recovery would also be fairly balanced, since +2 starting and -1 recovery somewhat nullify each other, then another +1 starting to justify the cost of spending a talent.

Iron Fist: I didn't know that, because the only folks I've punched are random Cyseal inhabitants, usually while grossly overleveled. Still, I don't think that talent is the way to encourage unarmed fighting. Frankly, any fighting style which doesn't get offense rating scaling isn't going to be viable, no matter what else you do.

Warlock: Man-at-Arms and spells are not an underpowered hybrid class at all. I'm actually using one in my current playthrough. Much more detail in the spoiler.

Quickdraw can give you far more than 4 AP. It reduces the AP of ranged attacks by 1. This means that every time you use a ranged attack, it gives you 1 AP. If you only attack 4 times in combat, then you're correct. If you attack more than 4 times (which most rangers will), then you're wrong.
ADDITIONALLY Quickdraw reduces the 'buy in' cost of making a ranged attack, which allows for more flexibility. You are now more likely to wind up with 'just enough' AP for a ranged attack, and less likely to waste AP by having 'not quite enough' for another attack.
Both of these effects last throughout the entire battle.

I can see giving Head Start a requirement, and I can see reducing it's AP value to 4, but reducing it to 1 makes it worthless. I would not even consider it spending a Talent point on it. One single extra AP per fight is completely negligible. My glass canon characters WASTE more than that on most turns, simply because they regenerate 16 AP per turn, and usually are left with 2 or 3 that they can't cast anything with.