Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Cost of sneaking, guerilla damage

That's the thing, you can never decrease actual sneak cost, the only thing you could do is refund the AP. Does not help though if a character has less than 5 AP left, because there's no way the engine would let a character sneak, it prohibits it and no script would ever receive any events.

So the only solution is to find an alternative way to enter sneaking. Of course there would have to be the chance for any item or skill to cost only 1 AP or maybe 0 AP. Both is possible, stance skills for example have no AP cost, backpacks are an example for items not costing any AP. The downside is that both would require an additional quickslot when there are too few even without any additional skill or item. Casting from inventory or the skillbook is tedious.

Sneaking is a status so maybe it works to apply it to self (data "SkillType" "Shout" via data "SkillProperties" and data "TargetConditions" "self"). Never tested it, but it would have advantages to let the engine do it because the engine might immediately remove the status if the sneaking character is seen by an enemy or friendly NPC. Might be possible to enter a -1 for duration and let the engine remove the status if appropriate.

I made the experience that manipulating statuses via character scripts can cause a game crash, at least it happened when I tried to remove a status immediately after it was applied. Means that care has to be taken with status application and removal in character scripts.
Of course you would have to remove the appropriate AP in an OnSkillCast() handler, because the skill itself could only have the minimum cost. The skill's tooltip might show a wrong amount for the cost and you'd have to give many explanations why it was inaccurate. (Maybe, several hidden and empty and animation-less skills could be created that are 'cast' in the background when the Sneak skill is cast or they could be hidden in a PlayEffectAt(__Me,"Smoke_Something"). I don't know how well the engine works with script casted skills for non-engine controlled characters though. ;-)

If you change sneak cost be aware that the crafting recipes to put sneaking onto gear are still present in EE (void or shadow essences). With those recipes, Sneaking 5 is doable without putting a single point into Sneaking. To disable these recipes, a lot of changes would be required. (Well, not disable, because that's impossible, but you can make the recipes unreachable.)