Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Weapon Differentiation - attack patterns/bonuses

With all weapons costing 1 AP to use in D:OS 2, there should be some way to give different weapon types utility. I think I heard that Larian was considering giving different weapons different types of basic attacks.

Possible examples (as in not necessarily balanced at this time) of how such things could work are:

Two-Handed
Spears (Attack type: piercing line)
- They can attack from a maximum range of 5-6 meters, but they have a piercing attack: If you are closer to the enemy, your attack pierces through hit to the next enemy within that 5-6 meter line (probably with some damage reduction on the second hit).

Combat Staves (Attack type:horizontal sweep)
- They have lower damage than edged weapons, but their standard attacks hit all foes within 3 meters in a 180 degree arc in front of the attacker. (Not that combat staves are actually in the game)

Swords (Attack type: horizontal slash)
- They have a 2.5 meter range and hit enemies within a 90 degree cone in front.

Axes (Attack type: Downward slash)
- They hit a single target, but for increased damage compared to swords.

Bows and Crossbows (Attack Type: ranged)
- I haven't really thought of a good way to differentiate these. Perhaps Bows do lower damage at close range and higher damage at long range, and Crossbows do higher damage at close range and lower damage at long range?


One-Handed
The main feature of one-handed weapons is being able to use shields. They are less offensively aimed and instead are geared more to improving survival.

Shields
- Shields have an inherent passive chance to trigger a shield bash on a successful block. Let's say that when an attack is blocked, there's between a 1/5 (20%) to 1/3 (33%) chance to trigger the bash, which does no damage, but stuns the attacker for 1 turn. (Stunned enemies do not take any additional damage, but cannot act.)


Daggers
- Daggers are tricky to balance. They have low damage, but can get guaranteed critical hits through Backstabs (which should be an inherent property of daggers, no longer tied to a mandatory Talent). For the rest of this topic, when I say "damage", I mean "damage when backstabbing".

If they do more damage than a sword, then Rogues are better than warriors. If they do the exact same damage as a sword, their lower health makes them an inferior warrior (although without Speed, Rogues could now invest just as heavily into CON as a warrior).

I think that the last time this came up, there were some vague suggestions that daggers could attack twice. But when I asked what that meant, it turned out they were thinking of that being only cosmetic. (Scenario: Your Rogue was standing within range of two enemies, and one was at 1 HP. If the Rogue attacked the 1 HP enemy, killing it on the first strike, their second attack would go off onto empty air. You would not be able to use your "second attack" on the surviving enemy. That is not a second attack, just a single attack cosmetically split in half)

A "second attack" which worked like that is pointless in my opinion, it is no different than having a single animation and doubling the listed damage of the dagger on the equipment screen.

Instead of trying to balance daggers by adding a cosmetic-only second attack, I have a different idea. Daggers will remain weak on attacking - so even backstabbing, they'll do notably less damage than main attack weapons - BUT they will instead double the dodge bonus the Rogue gets from Finesse (does not stack with dual-wielding).

Thus the Rogue will be doing less damage, and is limited on their effective angle of attack, but is also less likely to be hit than a warrior with the same Finesse.


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Once again, these are just examples of different ways to differentiate the behavior of weapons and the ideas are not necessarily balanced at this time.

It's potentially still more than just cosmetic. For example, say that armour has a damage reduction effect. For two attacks, you get affected by the damage reduction twice. However, this is balanced by providing the daggers with very high damage potential on unarmored enemies.

Personally, instead of providing crits for flanking, I would apply an armour piercing effect that mitigates the damage reduction. Thus, it's more important to flank armoured enemies. Squishy mages are squishy everywhere.

Also, I think it's a little boring to have swords as one handed and as two-handed. Spears, halberds, warhammers, staves, etc all provide much better variety.

One handed weapons could be things like swords, maces, axes, daggers.

I think it's a bit more interesting when the two handed weapons aren't just big versions of single-handed weapons. At least as long as Larian isn't planning to give us the full buffet of weapons.

Crossbows shoot in a straight line, while bows have an arced path of flight.

Another great way to balance Daggers... is to...

Not even try so to speak. Make it so Rogue skills rely on the Dagger.

Alternatively:

for the dagger is it could be pitiful in taking down Armor HP, yet great in taking down Raw HP and especially enemies who are compromised.

Daggers are all about opportunity.

Or you could give Daggers the ability to ignore Armor HP or ignore it in certain conditions. (truthfully that can be... a disadvantage, as enemies with Armor HP won't take CCs)

Honestly I can picture Rogues in this game basically being the kings of taking enemies once their Armor is gone. With Warriors being the armor killers.

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Honestly with there being three kinds of HP... That COULD be one way to differentiate weapons.

Weapons that attack Magic HP instead of Armor HP for example would be amazing on warriors assisting Mages.

I agree with the principle of this thread: greater weapon differentiation makes every one useful. Not like Skyrim, where a long sword (with enough enchantments) pretty much outclasses everything.

Hmm. Why should they be the only ones in the game who don't get a choice of weapon type? Maybe they can also dual-wield claws or tonfa (perhaps even a tonfa-style blade like Talim from Soul Calibur)? XD

Having a dagger-using Rogue suffer from damage reduction twice in exchange for being able to handle enemies without armor isn't exactly selling me on the idea.

I believe that you're trying to say that such a double-dipping penalty would be compensated for with increased damage onto targets which don't have armor beyond what standard weapons give.

I have concerns about balancing Rogues for being strong against unarmored targets and very bad versus armored targets. Unarmored targets by definition are likely to be easy to kill for all physical attackers, and since they're likely to be spellcasters or archers, they're also likely to be priority targets for everyone anyway. And if the only enemies remaining are armored (which will likely include more than a few bosses), that'll make the Rogue much less useful in combat.




Oh right, I forgot that. Yeah, that's good enough differentiation then, with the apparently increased use of height in the game.




As I said, I'm hesitant of trying to add rock-paper-scissors countering to physical attacks, in a game which is about letting you have so many options.

Final Fantasy X has such a system for physical attacks. The party (7-8 people, maximum of 3 in battle at once) has Tidus as a hard counter to fast enemies, Auron as a hard counter to armored enemies, Wakka as a hard counter to flying enemies. The key thing though, the reason why the RPS system for physical attacks works in FFX is because it also allows you to swap members mid-battle.


In D:OS 2, the party has 4 characters at a time and can't switch them mid-combat. I don't think it would work well for the role of Rogues to be "okay they're garbage at the start of the fight, but once the Real Warriors do their awesome stuff, the Rogues can finish off the rest, even though the Real Warriors are actually equally effective at all stages of the fight".

That's why my suggestion was not about trying to figure out balance by making Rogues out-damage warriors in some circumstances and under-damage warriors in others. Instead, giving dagger-users a much higher chance to dodge physical attacks, lets them get into combat and use their FIN to sustain their lives in combat instead of their CON. Tying that extra dodge chance to the dagger instead of FIN also means it only affects Rogues and not bow-users, who would also have high FIN, but they use distance to stay safe.

EDIT: The same bonus could also apply to some other (specific) FIN-based melee weapons if you wanted to give the Rogue more weapon variety than just daggers.

Personally, I would balance this by making it very easy for warriors to be physically blocked, whereas rogues have the potential to more easily slip past the zone of control of heavy warriors and slip through to mages.

But you're right that I've only considered this from the perspective of group vs group balancing. If D:OS is going to continue to have Group vs Boss battles, then there should be a way to coordinate this so that all team members have the opportunity to contribute.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that all of this is the best way to design rogues, but it's one way that the "double attack" is more than just cosmetic. Another way is that with your chance to hit being rolled twice, you're more likely to hit at least one of the two hits. And of course, you're carrying two weapons with different enchantments, so there are other potential differences as well.

I'm not saying the differences will be good or significant or interesting, but I'm sure there'll be at least a couple of differences which have a real effect on the gameplay.

"EDIT: The same bonus could also apply to some other (specific) FIN-based melee weapons if you wanted to give the Rogue more weapon variety than just daggers."

Well yeah. Daggers to me includes Blackjacks and Rapiers as well.

A "Dagger" to me is any weapon that uses Dex and can backstab.

The rapiers in D:OS looked terrible. The same length as swords but animated like daggers.

Blackjacks and rapiers are definitely different classes of weapons to daggers, but could also possibly be a good alternative to daggers. (Please no more dual-wielding of rapiers...)

I would also like for warriors to be able to do some dual-wielding with shorter weapons in the off-hand.

I would like to have whips. Using it to disarm an opponent would be cool and using it to swing indie style onto a ledge would be wicked cool.

Looks cool, but very difficult to program, literally hell-on-earth to animate, and if it works it cab break triggers, scripts and allow players to bypass things the devs don't want them to bypass.

(But, but...it would be really really cool!)

Good points Stabbey. Its a shame because I would like an rpg of this complexity to attempt it.

It isn't that. I am thinking of a way the Dagger can compliment the Rogue's style of gameplay WITHOUT making the Rogue just an alternate fighter.

They aren't meant to be in the thick of battle, but aren't as helpless as Mages would be, but are opportunistic.

So, I thought, why not make Daggers ABOUT opportunity and situation flipping which is what Rogues do best? Rogues Shine against distracted and disabled enemies.

Giving them amazing dodge ability is basically making a "Dex fighter" and what was I was trying to avoid. Certainly they need a buff to dodge... but still.

So take the Rogue's gameplay which isn't about sustained battle but in and out fighting, backstabs, and opportunistic fighting... In fact right there you can easily get distinctions. They need options for when it isn't available, but that is their prime gameplay.

Their other advantage is that they are able to disengage and safely engage more easily. Even against Wizards and hazards they are the ones who can traverse it.

Their disadvantages are direct confrontation, but can do so if need be.

So here is just a hypothetical Rapier ability.

-Rapier: When making a direct forward facing attack, Rogues move back a few steps ignoring AoO
-Rapier: A rogue can make one free attack with a rapier, yet forfet any other attacks for the turn.

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As for Warriors and why I give Armor Breaking abilities to them? They aren't based on CC and out of all the classes they have the fewest options for them (though they have two really nice CC abilities).

Giving them a weapon that just outright breaks through the enemy's ability to resist CCs compliments their role well.

As well Warriors because they are the main damage dealers also would benefit from just stronger weapons in general.

Weapons that deal primarily Magic based attacks and spells that deal physical damage are synergies.

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It is all about giving classes complimentary weapons that boost their style of play as opposed to giving them rock scissor paper abilities.

As well because the gameplay has changed with a more limited Action points, Three HP types, and other such things. It means that we can draw upon those for inspiration.

Spears' extra range is suddenly useful.

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Also all enemies have Armor HP, Magic HP, and HP. Having a weapon that does well against Armor HP isn't "Rock Scissor paper", it is just part of the flow of battle.

regarding rogues, I have some ideas:

- Each weapon has a backstab value. This means you get a bonus to attack and damage when you attack an enemy from behind. This value is 0 or very small for some weapons and very high for others (daggers maybe).
- Rogues have a talent that the bonus is higher for them and that the bonus is even higher when attacking from invisibility or stealth (the new backstab talent)
- Rogues can have a talent that they also get the damage bonus when attacking an enemy who cannot defend himself (like stunned). That is the "coup de grace" talent from DA:O.
- Rogues get a skill that they can move behind a nearby enemy without provoking an attack of opportunity. You can do this even if you could not go there normally but there must be some free space behind the enemy. (means for example you can do it when you are surrounded. I think of something like climbing or jumping over the enemy). If it fails you suffer an attack of opportunety and do not move, if it hits you move behind the enemy and if it is a critical hit you move behind the enemy and deal some damage.

My concern is that making Daggers about being very effective on those without armor and very INeffective on those who do have armor is that what happens in fights when the only targets are those who have armor? Then the Rogue isn't going to be able to contribute very much.

This isn't a game where we can carry around a bunch of party members in our pocket and can easily swap out party members mid-fights, so making 1/4 of your members only situationally useful could be unfun. "Oh, I guess I can't do anything yet. Better skip my turn again."

It might be boring to have Rogues as a "dodge tank" (as opposed to the "health tank" of the typical warrior), but it would make for Rogues who are useful in more situations. Being a dodge tank will still have weaknesses, though, as you cannot dodge spells and don't have quite as much HP to sustain yourself.

And again, as I've said, those targets without armor are already likely to be rangers or mages - priority targets for all classes, and likely to be lower in HP and so fairly easy to take out for all classes.




You're describing real-time gameplay. This isn't a real-time game.




How are they able to disengage and safely engage more easily? What allows them to do so?




What do you mean a forward-facing attack? Since you always have to attack targets in front of you by default, it seems to me like you're suggesting the Rogue attack targets from the target's front. But Rogue weapons have to be weaker than warrior weapons for reasons I've outlined elsewhere. So yay, you can do ineffective damage but escape more easily?

The second ability is very restrictive and doesn't seem like it does anything helpful. Yay, an attack uses no AP, but you can't do anything else but run no matter what?

Complicate dagger-class weapons with too many rules and conditions (not present on other weapon classes) and you'll have players going "you know what, screw this, I'll just hit things with an axe."

I'll remind you that in D:OS 1, each weapon had a different level and different damage points. You needed to constantly upgrade weapons to stay relevant. That would have to be changed in D:OS 2 for such a system to work.




You don't consider "pitiful in taking down Armor HP, yet great in taking down Raw HP" as rock-paper-scissors?



You mean, all of those at once? That's an awful lot of stuff to stack onto the tooltip of a dagger.

The game has no preset classes and in fact allows for hybrid classes. I don't even think that the tags include "Rogue". So that makes it difficult to restrict such talents.

Additionally, I see no reason to allow all other classes to backstab. It was removed from D:OS 1 for eating into the role of the Rogue too much.

Simple! Give them more kinds of weapons or give them alternatives.

Also once again ALL targets have armor. ALL OF THEM!

So under your system, weapon swapping costs no AP, right?

Also once again, "pitiful in taking down Armor HP, yet great in taking down Raw HP" means that dagger-users will be basically twiddling their thumbs and skipping turns waiting for characters who are effective for 100% of the fight to get things done.

What Dagger-Users will be doing is trying to do the best moves possible for their current position. No class is 100% effective for 100% of the fight...

In fact... Wizards have a distinct disadvantage in that they do low damage AND have to break through Magic HP on their own AND they do low damage to HP. They can deal physical damage through very select spells but those are abilities meant to negate their major weaknesses (which all classes have. Even Rogues have a skill made to allow them to deal serious damage even against an enemy's front)

The difference between the Rogue and Wizard is that the Wizard is ranged and the Rogue does significantly more damage in the back and once Armor HP is gone. Though they both have amazing CC abilities and rogues have more damaging "spells". (well among other things. Depending on what kind of wizard they are as well.)

Yet why is it that we don't consider he Wizard a "lesser class" for having the exact same weakness? Why are they considered 100% effective 100% of the time?

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It is why I kind of want there to be "Magic weapons" (weapons that deal magic damage) even if they are of a disadvantage and "Physical spells". Sure they aren't as good as ordinary weapons and ordinary spells. Yet their ability to synergize with certain party combinations actually opens up the game.

Want your Wizard to start up their CC game sooner? Well get the warrior to equip the "Magic Ax".

Guy got a tiny but of armor HP left and it is the mage's turn? Well cast that sword rain.

Also going to ask for a "Taking it personally" check.

Since I am enjoying just having a conversation. Yet it is impossible to tell if it is mutual online.