Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback New skill: Telekinesis Hand (Telekinesis revamp)

Telekinesis is pretty underwhelming. It's a holdover from D:OS 1, where it wasn't all that special either. It lets you pick up items from a distance and move items around - although you are allowed to move items your character could not physically move.

It's just not that useful an ability compared to the others. If I take Telekinesis, I at least want to be able to, at a distance:

• Pick locks
• Pick pockets (with a penalty, see below)
• Open chests
• Open doors
• Pull levers

Before you jerk your knee: If you think all this would make Telekinesis too powerful, then we could always remove +Telekinesis affixes from appearing on items. Also, the left-click functionality of Telekinesis would still work the same, allowing you to pick up/move/drag items from a distance by just clicking on them normally.

If you learn Telekinesis, you automatically learn a new skill.

Telekinesis Hand

Allows you to interact with items at a range of [Max Telekinesis range].

Requires: Telekinesis 1+
- If you reallocate your points, you cannot use this skill unless you have a point into Telekinesis or an item granting Telekinesis.

Memory Cost: 0
- This is a skill paid for by a civil ability point. It does not need a Memory requirement - and a memory requirement greater than 0 would be annoying especially since it is intended primarily for non-combat. (And again, we can possibly remove +Telekinesis from appearing on items if this is too powerful.)

AP Cost: 3-4
- One option is that this skill requires NON-COMBAT to use. It's the simple and easy approach to handling it.
- BUT I can see a combat use. It can allow the user to perform a standard melee attack at a range of [Max Telekinesis Range]. This costs an additional 1-2 AP more than a regular melee attack, so it's not useful if you are able to move there. It might be a neat combat option.

Cooldown: 0 turns
- Cooldown for this mostly non-combat skill would only be annoying, having to wait 6 seconds between uses. In combat the AP cost can be used for balance. If it costs 4 AP for instance, you can only use it once a turn, twice with Warlord and that's if your first attack is a killing blow.

Range: TBD
- I'm not sure what the current range is for Telekinesis. It's a civil ability so that's a maximum of 5 points possible. In a vacuum, I'd say that the first point gives a range of 4.0 meters, and each subsequent point gives an additional 2.0 meters, for a total of 12.0 meters. Or maybe a starting of 5 and an increase or 3 for 15 total. Otherwise I'll just stick with what the current range settings are.


This would make pickpocketing far too risk-free if I could do it from so far away!
Good point! So perhaps there should be a penalty to the amount you can steal using Telekinesis compared to up-close pickpocketing. After all, it's one thing to be able to fling a barrel across the room when you don't care who notices. It's another to try to delicately remove items from someone's person without having them notice.

Maybe a penalty of -40% for Telekinesis 1, and that decreases by 10% with each point, up to 0% penalty at Telekinesis 5. Or a starting penalty of -50% at Telekinesis 1, and that decreases by 10% with each point, up to a 10% penalty at Telekinesis 5.


If it's a skill, how would picking locks work?
Err... well okay you kinda got me there. I'm not quite sure.

Two ideas. You could use Telekinesis Hand to select a lockpick and thus have a Lockpicking Hand which you could use to pick locks at a distance. Or you could just use Telekinesis hand on a door, and it would either unlock if you had the key, do nothing if you had no lockpicks, or if you had a lockpick, automatically tried to pick it.



Why a new skill?
I decided that you should learn a new skill because that would allow use of the skill preview which lets you see the range of your other skills. That's easier than trying to do that with just the standard left-click, and making it a skill allows a more restricted range of things you can use it on, which should be easier to code and debug than trying to add it to the left-click functionality.

Plus, this goes back to the roots of the series. Telekinesis was a skill in Divine Divinity which worked much like how I am proposing (except minus pickpocketing). It was a skill you could use to activate levers and other things from a distance.

***

Well, that's my suggestion. So, flame away. Get out your tar and feathers and call my idea totally stupid and OP.

No feathers, the idea is good. Not so sure about pickpocketing though.

I like it. Telekinesis definitely seemed very underwhelming to me, though I know some people found it borderline gamebreaking, mostly because of dumb AI though. Ranged attack is possibly a bit much for a civil ability, as is pickpocketing, though with enough penalty it probably would be fine -- I think there should always be at least a little penalty even with 5+ telekinesis). Like, you could maybe telekinetically pickpocket a key or scroll, but wouldn't be filching a two-handed axe. I also feel like someone seeing an item fly across the room, even if they can't see you directly, should arouse suspicion, but not sure how hard that is to program.

Another idea is that telekinesis could be used on characters to shove them short distances (like 3-5m max, maybe costs 2-3 AP, 1-2 turn cooldown or something). Maybe too much combat utility for that though. The combat/civil distinction is a tad arbitrary anyway, given something like bartering can provide massive combat benefits by garnering you better gear, and telekinesis can already be used in combat anyway.

As I said, the ranged attack idea is optional and I would be totally fine if Telekinesis Hand was a 0 Memory skill which - the opposite of Adrenaline - did not work in combat. The only combat utility I suggested was - like the other uses of Telekinesis Hand - just a duplication of left-click functionality; it only allows you to perform a basic melee attack at a range, and at an increased AP cost, making it only situationally useful.

I am also okay with Telekinetic pickpocketing having a -50% penalty at Rank 1 and a -10% at the max Rank 5. I wouldn't worry about suspicion at all, the only time it would come into play are the situations where you can't use normal pickpocketing because the mark is standing in a sightline. In which case adding suspicion would essentially make it impossible to use, and you might as well prohibit long-distance pickpocketing altogether.

Suspicion could also be difficult to program in a reasonable fashion without just being "100% success" or "100% fail". But then again, it should probably be no different than moving owned items across the room using the current implementation of telekinesis, so that's something they'll have to solve anyway.




That is another idea, but Telekinesis is a Civil ability so I focused on improvements mostly for non-combat aspects.

Or, and I know this might be a radical concept, instead of adding more "mandatory" stuff to the game, why not just make telekinesis do that by default?

Telekinesis: +X meters interaction range per level, +X interaction strength per level.

Er... I believe that was what I was saying.

The point of having a Telekinesis Hand skill is to make it easier for the game to tell the difference between something you want to walk up and touch and something you want to touch from a distance so you don't say, walk over a field of necrofire to pull a lever. It would be difficult to add the different functionality changes to left-click without a lot of unintended actions and even worse - bugs. Additionally, as I said, making it a skill means you can use the skill previews to see the range, which is not something you can do with always-on left-click-only Telekinesis.

There is never a time it'd not be advantageous to manipulate something at a distance and if you do want to do it up close, manually walking up to something to use "point-blank telekinesis" on it is still a superior solution that requires no new skill/toggle/stuff.

Having it as a skill would only work if the entire mechanic was made into just the skill.

Probably would make it easier, if you replace everything with the core concept and telekinesis only increasing range, base range would be 0.5 or something like that probably.

You would need still a button to show you your range, similar to the one that shows sightcones in case you want to try sneaking. Or perhaps add it to the same button, if you see the sight cones you also see your range for telekinesis.

Hey, if Larian can figure out a way to let you use telekinesis to pick locks, (possibly pockets as well), open chests, open doors, and pull levers using the left-click functionality without a skill, I'm totally okay with that too.

The point is to improve Telekinesis. If they can do that, I'm fine with whatever nuts and bolts they use to implement it.

What about holding a button to use telekinesis, similar to holding ctrl to use your basic attack? It wouldn't need to be a separate skill and holding the button could show you range.

+1 for not loving telekinesis, I don't see many real benefits to having it at all. Waste of a point.

Stabbeys ideas seem pretty solid.

Its about 2 points to move 60kg barrel of oil. How many points do I need to move 50kg squishy wizard ? That lava pool would make her even more hot.