Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Balance suggestions thread

I think most people that completed the game agree that its horribly unbalanced and allows to do ridiculous stuff that eliminates any difficulty. Maybe we can come up with a list of problems and suggested changes and maybe they will be fixed by a patch or a difficulty mod. I'll start out.

I would divide stuff into 3 categories - Survivability, Damage, CC and Misc for more structure.

I. Survivability

(This is probably the most broken area because if you can't be killed everything else doesn't matter)

1. Invisibility/sneak - sneak costs too little ap at high level, enemies don't know how to counter, mage invisibility spammable each turn, sneak spammable each turn.
Suggested fixes:
-Reduce sneak efficiency(easier detection). Efficiency scales with level. Ap cost is not reduced.
-Make farsight (aero) detect sneak/invis. Give it to boss level enemies at least.
-Sneak/invis breaks if an enemy moves close to you during his turn
-Enemies actively seek invisible targets

2. Elemental immunity - too easy to get, while shouldn't be a thing at all
Suggested fixes:
-Use the same damage mitigation formula as armor
-Being healed by an element is a unique trait of certain chars
-Possibly add immunity perks as lvl 5 perks for the corresponding magic schools. They should make taking the perks of the opposite element impossible and also reduce resistance to the opposite element.
-Nerf resistances provided by crafting (rubies/essences)

UPDATE: Elemental immunity is now capped at 80% outside of buffs. This is an improvement, but since you can spam elemental absorption like there's no tomorrow, not a big one.

3. Leech (with comeback kid or not) - pretty obvious
Suggested fixes:
-Leech triggers only once per turn
-Leech does not trigger after comeback kid triggered

UPDATE: Leech is now fixed. Hooray!

4. Shield block - can make virtually immune to physical damage
Suggested fixes:
-Nerf across the block
-Introduce a cap

5. Mage shield spells doubling your hp
Suggested fixes:
-Nerf to something more sensible

6. CC immunity - immunity to common CC like knockdown, stun, freeze easy to find on items making willpower and bodybuilding much less useful
Suggested fixes:
-Remove all permanent CC immunities from the game (For the PCs, for mobs they are ok). Add temporary immunities to existing spells. Example:
Rage - KD immunity
Earth shield - petrification immunity
Farsight - blind immunity
etc...

Limit the number of active buffs on a char so you can't buff up to be immune to everything e. g. one elemental shield at a time.

II. Damage

The biggest problem with the damage is tons of high value damage bonuses that all stack and are either passive or spammable with low AP cost.

Main offenders:
-Guerilla
-Bully
-Rage
-Oath of desecration
-Stacking +weapon skill items
-Resistance debuffs

Suggested fixes:
-Guerilla will be fixed if stealth AP cost is fixed. Also sneaking in heavy armor is stupid and should be nerfed
-Bully should be nerfed at least to 25%
-Rage and Oath should not stack. Also maybe nerf both
-Damage bonus from weapon skills should be additive with other %based damage bonuses, not multiplicative
-Resistances should't go below 50% when using debuffs
-General spell/weapon damage scaling rebalancing. Some spells are OP, some are useless at high levels. Weapons could use higher damage at start and lower endgame.

III. CC

1 Big problem: CC is too easy to apply, even on bosses. Now I don't like these kinds of games that have bosses immune to everything. But it could use some tweaks:

Suggested fixes:
-Diminishing returns on CC. Enemies get a bonus resist chance if you try to chain CC them.
-Reduced duration on bosses. Petrifying a boss for 3 turns is stupid.
-Charm duration nerfed


IV. Misc

-Telekinesis is obviously broken in combat and needs major tweaks

Reserving to make edits later