Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Aggro?

I beat the thing a couple of times, but I'm still unsure about how aggro works in this game.

I mean, afaik there aren't any specific skills that say anything along the lines of "make enemies target/approach you". And for mages, summons seem to do the job for them well enough, and anything that physically removes my dudes from enemy line-of-sight seems work the way it's intended (as in "can't find target? hit the next visible dude").

Not that I really need aggro for DOS, but... just curiosity, I guess. So yeah, what causes mobs to home in on party members?

-Enemies LOVE attacking your summons. They will frequently run past your characters to hit their summons.
-Enemies (on Normal) seem to prefer NOT to focus-fire your characters. If one character is near death, they seem to slightly prefer attacking other characters
-They don't seem to discriminate between your different characters based on how armored you are, or whether you're a caster.
-They do seem to like attacking the nearest target
-They do seem to prefer attacking what they can see, rather than running forward until they can see more (this can be used to bottleneck them in doorways).

The only mechanic in the game I've noticed that directly affects aggro is the 'Stench' talent.

oh yeah, the Stench talent! interesting

also thanks for putting 'em all in bullet points, kinda easier to think of 'em this way

As this is an old-school RPG, there is no 'aggro' mechanic...

There's definitely aggro, they just don't expose the mechanics of it to the player.
Any time the enemies prioritize one character over another, that's aggro at work.

That's not aggro at work, that's just targeting.
And seeing how it's (aside from summons) almost entirely random... well...

Aggro is the system of mechanics which determines who enemies target, and why. If you know these mechanics, you can use them to your advantage.

For example, in WoW you can 'drop aggro' by reducing your dps, or by casting feign death, all of which adjust the formulas so that enemies will move you lower down on their 'list of things I want to kill'.

In DOS there are CLEARLY aggro mechanics, since one of the Talents (Stench) directly mentions them.

If there is any mechanic more complex than "Target Closest" or "I always target X, unless there are no X" then there is aggro.

I would have said this as "there is CLEARLY at least one aggro mechanic," but this guy's right. Whatever Stench does is an aggro mechanic.

Yeah, there is definitely something odd going on there. I've had multiple opponents disengage from my melee characters and trigger attacks of opportunity just to run over to a new player summon that's entered the battlefield. Even bosses do it.

My experience is that most enemies prioritize characters with lowest defenses, sometimes very desperately. Undead dudes going all the way around my knights just to get to the ranger or Jahan at all costs. I've had many fights turning into some weird chase because of this. Skellies chasing my ranger, knights chasing skellies. Eventually learned to use my ranger as bait, grouping enemies around her, featherbed into a safe spot and unleash AoE attacks.

Going to try stench on my rng and see how it works.

Sometimes it is triggered by attacking certain enemies. One example is that orcs go after the character that attacked their shaman.