Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Polymorpher Skills

So now that the Polymorpher is guaranteed to be the most voted Skill tree, i think its time to make a thread about skills.

The Kickstarter page was full of suggestions and there are several threads about the class, however, i havent found a centralized post for people to post their ideas of Polymorpher skills yet.

Ill lead by example of course:


Polymorpher General:
In my opinion, the Polymorpher should be a Skill line that compliments Melee fighters, since right now, they are perhaps the least developed class, having only one skill line and benefitting less from elemental skill lines than rangers (due to the synergies ofthen not working in their favor and exploding right into their faces)

I would also argue, that Granades are far less usefull than Special arrows, as they do not scale with weapon damage and quite ofthen (such as in the case of the Ice Granade) actually working against the melee playstyle.

As such, i propose that the Polymorpher Skill tree should scale with either Strength or Constitution (personally i would prefer constitution, however in another thread people have argued that this would be overpowered)

Furthermore, i propose that Polymorphing is a skill line based on Enhancing and Controlling.

As such, the Polymorpher has a skill duality, i propose that all Polymorpher skills can be cast on yourself aswell as on enemies, with different results.
This allows the Polymorpher to have a flexibility that is not innate to any other "Warrior" class.

Abilities:

Note: Im basing this off Divinity Original Sin EE, for a lack of better knowledge of OS2, as such, i will abstain from talking about cooldowns, AP cost and such. I will however attempt to incporporate what we already know about Original Sin2, such as the existance of grease or the cover system aswell as my personal twists on abilities larian has suggested for the polymorpher, also, some of my suggestions might appear a little outlandish, however, due to Swens enthusiasm about this Class, i suspect that they plan to go big with this one.


Morph Claw:
Cast on Self: Your main hand transforms into a terrifying claw that has a chance of bleeding your enemies, its damage scales with your strength, higher level casters can fuse their arms with their main hand weapons, carrying over benefits of your weapons to your claw attack

Cast on enemies: Your targets main hand transforms into a tiny crab claw, the target drops/unequips its mainhand weapon and is no longer able to attack with it

Note: This is what i mean by "Duality", the Polymorphers skills should be able to either enhance your own performance, or hinder an enemy.


Acid Blood:

Cast on Self: For the duration of the spell, you now Bleed Acid (such as several enemies already do), also, acid heals you.

Cast on an Enemy: The target now is poisoned and bleeds acid, however it is not resistant to acid unless it was already resistant before.


Lashing Tentacles:

Lashing tentacles grow from the target, these tentacles have their own turn in the turn order and attack the closest enemy, applying poison.
Higher level tentacles can pull enemies towards the target.

Note: The effect doesnt change based on the target, however, the effect can be used in multiple ways.
When cast on self, the Polymorpher has an extra melee attack that poisons enemies and pulls them towards him.
When cast on en enemy, for example a ranger, it will deal damage behind enemy lines and force them to split up.


Grappling Tongue:

Target Enemy: Pull target enemy in front of your character
Target Ally: Pull yourself towards your ally, also helps your ally up if hes knocked down


Eye Scream:

Target Self: dozens of Eyes grow on your body, making you immune to flanking, backstabbing and increasing your accuracy and perception.

Target Enemy: Dozens of Eyes grow on the body of your enemy. For the duration of this spell, you always have vision of your enemy and the surroundings of your enemy, allowing you to cast spells and throw granades even if line of sight is broken (this does not include physical barriers, which would obviously stop projectiles in the game engine)
This decreases the benefit of the targets cover. Grants perception in the vision range of the target (such as traps)


Blubber:

Cast on Self: Grows whale like blubber on your body, you now bleed grease, you gain resistance to ice damage and increased armor.

Cast on enemy: Your enemy grows incredibly corpulent, slowing his movement, making him bleed grease and making him vulnerable to fire damage

Note: Crafted by combining the "Acid Blood" skillbook with the "Grease" skillbook.


Serpent Tail:

Cast on Self: You grow a muscular Serpents tail, increasing your movement range (by decreasing the movement cost) and granting you the "constrict" ability, which allows you to immobilize an enemy in melee range

Cast on Enemy: The targets legs are fused together in a strange mockery of nature, forcing it to awkwardly hobble about. Decreases the targets movement speed. Additionally, every time the target attempts a movement action, there is a chance that it will slip and be knocked down, simmilar to moving on Ice



Bees! Bees!

Cast on Self: A huge Beehive grows from your Skull. Everytime you are hit, a swarm of bees spawns from your head, attacking nearby enemies.

Note:bees could act as an enviromental hazard, simmilar to fire, which is spawned next to your character. Alternativeley, bees could act like a spell that attacks the closest enemy

Cast on Enemy: Your targets Head grows into a huge Beehive, casuing your target to be confused, everytime your target is struck, it will spawn a swarm of bees attacking nearby enemies.


Source Spells:

Note: It is hard to judge how strong source skills should actually be, some of these skills might be more suited for lategame abilities rather than source spells.


Grow Wings:

Cast on Self: Grow a pair of mighty wings, your movement now ignores any both characters and terrain (safe for terrain that obviously cannot be traversed such as walls or pillars) , allowing you to cross the entire battlefield unhindered. Attacks of opportunity only apply while taking flight, not by any other enemies you cross while moving.

Cast on Enemy: Powerfull wings grow on the back of your enemy, however, these treacherous apandages do not bend to his will.
You now controll your enemies movement phase, all other perks of the wings apply.

Note: naturally, there has to be a restriction of AP used, else you could completley exhaust your enemies AP every turn just by moving about.


Siamese Slaughter:

Cast on Self: An Identical Clone of your Character spawns, fused to your characters back.
These Characters share both their Health Pool aswell as their movement.
As a result of your four leggedness, you are now resistant to knockdown. You are also immune to backstabs and flanking.
The Clone is always facing in the opposit direction as your character and cannot move around on his own, is however apart from that a fully functioning character, able to both attack and cast spells.

Cast on Enemy: Much the same applies to your target, the only difference is that the Player now has controll over the clone. The clone cannot attack its host and shares its HP pool with it aswell.

Note: perhaps my most outlandish aswell as favorite idea.



Closing Comment: As you can see, most abilities i have proposed are in general more usefull when cast on self, mostly due the fact that your character tends to be stronger and healthier than your enemies.
I wanted the skills to benefit a frontline fighter afterall. However, i wanted to add some utility to the build.

Almost all of these abilities work without the alternative target, however i feel like the character would benefit greatly by keeping them, making him more flexible in general.

Furthermore, one might notice that i have no direct damage spells included. This is a conscious descision, in my opinion, the Polymorpher should focus on changing Characters, not on dealing damage or greatly affecting the enviroment.

This greatly differentiates this class from Mage classes that primarily focus on dealing damage or manpulating the enviroment.


So now its your turn, show me what ideas youve got in store.
Last time i checked, Larian asked for suggestions!

First things first. I agree when you say the class should be about enhancing and controlling.

I'm not really sure that I would focus on controlling enemies since utility for a melee class wouldn't need to disrupt the enemies much, the man-at-arms skill tree does that well enough. And also that would make it super duper op ESPECIALLY if this skill tree is going to scale with CON as you(and I) think it should. Imagine a mage with your polymorph skills using it just against enemies. . . Also I'm not sure that strictly benefiting STR melee fighters is the way to go either. You kinda put rogues in tough spot since you kinda don't bother with DEX at all.

With that being said, I think the utility that a polymorph tree would need to provide a melee fighter would be better suited being something that protects him/her from environmental hazards or increase his/her damage output(i.e. decreasing ap costs/increasing crit. rate|damage).

I think something that could make them immune to clouds (poison/electric/smoke) would be a really neat thing to do. While I have no idea what the skill would be, they could be different skills for instance, you could have something that allows them to be able to see through smoke clouds (I'm thinking something simple like cat-eyes). Another idea is something that makes it possible to walk on ice(not exactly like the scoundrel skill that avoids terrain). These would give non melee classes reason to consider it.

As for the increasing of damage output, I like your claws idea actually. Kinda covers the damage output thing. I do think that there should be a couple of AoE attacks however, in the spirit of general utility for melee fighters.

The next problem I have with the skills(which I already sorta mentioned) is that they have 0 drawbacks. If the polymorph ends up being the way that you've made it, I can't imagine not having ALL of my characters sufficiently trained in the skill tree to have some of those skills. I mentioned in a different post that I would have some drawbacks (akin to the ranged/power stances). The easiest drawback to come up with is for the Blubber skill. Just lose x% movement speed.

You have good ideas, but I personally think that you went a little too op and I would focus more on the characters' interactions with themselves and hazardous environments as opposed to crowd control.

Well i would argue that most skills in divinity dont actually have a drawback that isnt friendly fire. And melee attacks all dont have any friendly fire at all.

I realy didnt think much about balancing here.
I gotta go pretty soon but i guess i could write a more detailed answer and revise some of my skills when i got time again.

I didnt realy want to mess with how Fighters interact with zones, i suppose you could have things like Serpent tail not making you faster but making you immune to Oil slick and stuff like that.

When I think about polymorph, neverwinter nights and dungeon siege 1 and 2 comes to my mind. In these games, using polymorph meant your character would transform completely on monsters and animals, getting their abilities and skills. It was so awesome!! I really wish something like that on divinity 2

By the way, OP, I loved your suggestions too

Your ideas sound really good.

I have some ideas myself.
I assume polymorph means that the char transforms into another creature.
There may be some normal creatures, but I think about the unusual things.

- You can transform into a cloud of gas (poison cloud, lightning cloud or something else)
advantage: You cannot be hit by normal physical attacks. You harm enemies by simply being at the same place as they are.
disadvantage: You cannot do anything except moving. You cannot attack. You are weak against magic damage (but you are healed by the element of the cloud you are). You can easily moved by wind.

- You transform into a slime monster of acid or poison.
advantages: You can spit poison/acid at your enemies. When you move, you cover the surface with poison/acid as you move. You are healed while standing on poison/acid.
disadvantages: You move slowly. Since you are liquid, you and your slime can easily be frozen (Edit: or burning if you are poison slime). You are weak against an element (like poison is weak to fire).

If you transform into something that is not humanoid, you cannot use items, most weapons/armors and you cannot use most abilities you have as human (or dwarf, elf, . . .). The transformations have a duration, but you can become normal again at will (for AP). The transformations have a cooldown and the cooldown starts when you become normal again after being transformed.

Gonna throw in my two cents in here because I think I have a very different idea about what a polymorpher should do.

In my mind, polymorphing has to be a difficult discipline. You can't just change willy nilly or you get stuck that way, and if changing yourself is hard, then changing others must be extremely difficult. As such, I'd like it if these abilities focused on self improvement and using beast/monster-like abilities to your advantage.

In my opinion, this class would be best served as a melee caster. Abilities which act the same as say a bleed slash from a warrior or rogue, but that increase in gravity as you climb higher in the ability ranks. For example, at novice level, you would change your hand into a claw and deal the bleed that way, or change into say having a turtle shell and you protect yourself for the turn. Then as you get better and bigger skills you get to the point of changing your entire model for a couple of turns and obtaining the abilities of that beast. A removed skill from classic Original Sin was I believe called phoenix dive which was a warrior skill that allowed you to traverse the field and deal some fire damage. This skill could be reused for this class, and make others like it. However, I understand how difficult such a thing would be to actually implement into the game (the sheer amount of modeling and animating would be staggering, not even mentioning the coding), but this is my wish for it.

As a compromise, I think simple "beast master" type skills would be awesome, with shapeshifting in there for wow factor, especially at master tier. I liked a lot of the OPs ideas regarding skills which would grant a passive effect, I think it fits the theme really well.

Regardless I know Larian will do a great job, I just hope they have the time and money to implement some community suggestions as well

I want to pollymorf self to items. Morf self to a comfy chair, so when someone sees me want to sit and rest for a while. When done I ll pickpocket him. Eventually we could talk when he is sitting, grow a spiky tentacle in his butt certainly improves memory.

Also want to polymorf to intimidating statute. This statue is horrible so every enemy want to attack. But well, stone statues just stone still.