Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Does difficulty matter?

As far as I can see the difficulty level doesn't matter.

I tried defeating some Orcs that were my level with an Orc Sage that was 2 levels higher, playing on Normal.The Sage kept on charming one or two of my characters, ultimately defeating me.

I tried again on Easy and the Sage still charmed and I still lost.

My point is, if that Org Sage is pre-loaded with the same spells on every level, like Charm, what does it matter what level your playing? The same enemies that can heal their allies still heal their allies. The bowmen with fire arrows sill fire those fire arrows at you. What level you are playing at seems to make no difference.

It affects damage absorbed by enemies and their total health for certain. There is one battle in front of a cave where I just couldn't beat such a large number of enemies on Normal, had to swap to easy for that one encounter. Combat is still difficult on easy, and still forces you to fight enemies your level. Anything more than a level higher isn't happening.

Easy - Player bonus to HP, enemy reduced chance to hit
Normal - Exactly as it sounds
Hard - Player reduced HP, enemy increased chance to hit

Whether your players can be charmed or not depends on their Willpower.

More precisely:

Easy: Player vitality +60%, player chance to hit +20%, NPC vitality -50%, NPC chance to hit -20%

Normal: Player vitality +15%

Hard: Player vitality -25%, player chance to hit -20%, NPC vitality +25%, NPC chance to hit +20%

I am fighting on normal constantly enemies up to 4 level above me, 3 level above me even in higher numbers. It works fine if you have enough board control to deal with them one after another. Wet + Chill = Frozen, Wet + Lighting = Stunned, Rain makes board control so easy. Add a decent initiative and 2 glass cannons mages and dealing with large groups of even higher level enemies becomes quite manageable. But your damage output suffers a lot and if your coop partner is sleeping with his CC it can become quite deadly very fast.

Anyway, the main difference seems to be your own HP. You have a 15% HP bonus on normal, and -25% HP on Hard for example. That is additive not multiplicative, so glass cannon + hard means -75% HP for example. Glass Cannon + Hard + Lonewolf means just 95% HP, add picture of health and you are at 120%, etc

Well, if all you say is true guys, regarding improved stats for my party and less for enemy, on Easy, then I am not seeing it. 3 arrows killed one of my party on normal and three arrows killed him on easy.So something somewhere isn't right on those difficulty levels!

@uk john
keep in mind that attacks don't deal the same damage every time, and even if they did what you're describing is still possible.

Imagine this:
Normal HP = 115
Easy HP = 160
Arrow Damage = 55

Whether you're playing on easy or normal, you're still going to die from 3 arrows. That doesn't mean it's broken, that's just how the numbers happened to pan out.

I hope they add an even more difficult level!