http://larian.uservoice.com/forums/...wn-reduction-for-skills-based-on-your-stIn D:OS, As your Intelligence increased, it decreased the cooldown time of spells. (There was no equivalent for DEX or STR-based skills, although I believe that is coming in D:OS EE.)
Not only did that make the already-powerful mages even more powerful, but it also reduced the importance of tactical choice. Once some cooldowns decreased to 1 turn, you could just use the ability again the next turn. The decisions about what the best spell to use in the particular situation became less important. Should I use spell X now, or save it for a better time?
It also complicated the design of the skill balance, because a character with the same skill-set at Int 8, int 14, and Int 20 played quite a bit differently because of the cooldown times.
The EE's change to add cooldown reduction for all kinds was the right one for D:OS 1 to help fix some of the imbalance, but I do not think it should be the way to go in D:OS 2.
If there was a hard design rule of No Cooldown Reduction (based on your stats - I see a role for certain Talents and Skills to alter cooldown), then the game and skills would have to be balanced around that.
It would remove the complexity-adding factor of the wildly variable cooldowns, helping encounter/skill balance, because now you have a certain number of skills available and are not able to spam mid-high level skills each turn.
That's not to say that skill spam should be entirely removed. On the contrary, I think that fixed cooldown reduction could open up tactical choices. There could be some low-level spells which had a 0 or 1 turn cooldown, some mid-level spells which had cooldowns of 3-6, and higher-level spells with a 7-turn cooldown. That would work even better if you had to store AP for 2-3 turns to be able to even cast some high-level spells. The player would have to decide if they wanted to keep up a constant stream of weaker attacks, or if now was the time to unleash a high-powered attack, knowing it would be some time before it could be done again.
I think that by insisting that stats can't lower cooldown, it will make design easier and increase the importance of tactical choice in combat.
