Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Rework of Skill Trees + Memory Stat

One thing that I always felt unique to DOS is that Skill trees (Aerotheurge, Man at Arms, Scoundrel etc) are designed to be self-sufficient. Which is very nice, as they tend to have pretty much everything in unique flavour (damage, heal, debuffs and buffs + certain things unique).

But I was always bothered by the fact that there are no passive skills AND that the Talent system is nowhere as sufficient to "personalise" your character and feel rewarded for sticking to a path.

So, in DOS2 I am hoping to see the following things:

- passive skills in Skill trees: they could not require to be "memorised" to be active, and they would be able to uniquely "gratify" specialists - and lighten the eventual load of talents to add;

- skill "upgrades": passive skills which are applied to active ones in order to make them deal more damage, last longer etc.. similar to Dragon age, and I believe it would work beautifully for certain "standard" skills (like Fireball, fire shield), but excluding custom ones (like Blood rain). They'd also certainly work for Source skills (like the meteor storm we have seen in gameplay videos)

I also believe reducing skill trees in terms of choice of active skills makes sense with the new "memory stat", which limits exactly how many skills you can have in combat.

Opinions?

I don't agree with your ideas. Skills are always active, Talents are always passive. I see no good reason to change that, and the idea to have passive skills which eat up a memory slot is just plain bad.

They wouldn't eat a memory slot necessarily. And your assumption is wrong ab origine: skills are nowhere always active,nor are talents always passive. Think of D&D feats, which are DOS talents: you have both active and passive.

One of them is not like the other.

I think what Stabbey is saying is that the way D:OS split skills into active and passive, calling the passive ones Talents, is a system that does its job well enough that there is no real need for changes such as those suggested.

Matter is, that it does not really do it.
If you actually look at the skills of each skill trees, a number of them could safely become passive skills without detriment to the game experience.

Secondly, talents are very generic, with a couple exceptions (like Elemental Ranger), without enriching any particular skill tree.

Um...

D:OS has a range of skills that they often call "stances". eg Ranged Power Stance. Zero activation cost. Lasts forever.

It's one of several passive skills.

Also, passive skills are another way to encourage investment in the memory stat. I've heard plenty of complaints about how mages get so many skill trees compared to other classes. Imagine that if you want to use fire magic (or any other skill tree), you first have to memorise a passive skill that unlocks fire magic. It makes sense, right? You have to remember the fundamentals of using fire magic before you can remember how to use a specific fire magic spell. It would be a fair way of encouraging mages to specialise.

You could also have useful high level passive skills so as to encourage further investment in memory at high levels without bloating your skill list.

That's not what "passive" means. You have to ACTIVEly choose when to toggle the stance on or off. A passive gives the same bonus constantly. ACTIVEly using the stance skills at different moments changes how your character plays. Can you name any other non-stance "passive skills"?




First, no, it does not make sense. To learn fire skills, you're already paying a cost: spending ability points into Pyrokinetic. That's the point of having abilities, it signifies that you've learned the fundamentals of said ability.

Secondly, you're paying a cost in terms of Memory. Higher-level skills have higher costs in memory (and some possibly have costs in Source points). Unlike in D:OS 1, Memory does not care how many schools you've learned, you only have so many slots for all your schools. That encourages you to specialize because no matter how many different schools you put points into, there's only so many slots to go around.

Isn't a major goal behind the creation of Memory to limit the power of poly-school mages? What is the problem remaining with Memory which your "you can cast basic fire spells wow" passive solves?

If you can't turn it off, then it's not a passive skill. Active skills have a short term cost (AP, MP, etc). Passive skills have an active cost. In the case of D:OS, the cost is that you can only have one stance at a time.

You can do exactly the same thing in Diablo 3 with their passive skills. The fact that you can toggle it on and off does not make it less of a passive skill. The other part that makes it a passive skill is that you can only have one stance at a time.


I thought this was pretty clear, but I'll explain.

For example, imagine you have 5 memory slots, and each spell costs 1 memory. It also costs 1 memory to unlock a skill tree.

So you have the option to specialise:
* 1 point to unlock Fire spells
* You spend the remaining 4 points on Fire spells

If you have to use memory to unlock higher tiers:
* 1 point to unlock Fire spells
* 1 point to unlock tier 2 Fire spells
* 3 points to spend on tier 2 Fire spells.

Or you can multiskill:
* 1 point to unlock Fire spells
* 1 point to unlock Water spells
* 3 points to spend on whichever Fire & Water spells you want.

Combining these two ideas, you might decide to spend:
* 2 points unlocking tier 2 Fire spells
* 1 point unlocking tier 1 Water spells
* 1 point on a tier 2 Fire spell
* 1 point on a tier 1 Water spell

Does it make sense now?


This is incorrect. See below:

Exactly like Ayvah pin-pointed, you don't have to put any point in anything to learn any skill.
You get a Fireball skill book? Right-click and learn it with whoever you see fit.

If you give fireball to your warrior, sure he/she'll be able to cast fireball, but 0 point in Pyro means that you won't do a lot of damage with that fireball. You'll still be able to cast it though.

You're really arguing about a technicality: more than passive, stances are more like Dragon Age "sustained" skills, you need to activate them.