Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Game Master Some feedback

Is it possible to bind a character to the party so that it travels with them automatically?
I noticed Matt had to re-spawn Ol' Goober the boar after the party traveled to a new scene, and eventually completely forgot about the boar altogether, meaning when they went even further along the boar was just gone.


Is it possible to take control/give control over a character to a player?
I'm sure everyone saw the part where Baze Bearweiser was turned into a chicken and lost control over his character, but would the GM be able to give him control over it again and/or take control of it himself?
Another example would be if the GM wants to change someone's player character completely, like making them an undead. Is this possible?


Can the GM forcefully make someone skip their combat turn and/or re-order the turns in combat?
Matt asked the dwarf to, but could he have done it himself?

Could you add a way of just editing doors to lead to other areas, rather than having to open up the map every time and selecting it from what could be a very large list?

And with the above, is it currently possible for party members to be in seperate areas at the same time, or does the entire party move at the same time when you change areas?


Is there a quest log for GM mode? Individually would be a bit much, I'm thinking one group quest log editable by the GM.
It could be just one plaintext editable log or there could be individual quests the GM can create/edit/toggle completion on.


Can you resize characters/creatures?

Concur that it'd be useful to be able to assign ally NPC's to follow party, even across areas. That's not possible in SCL and is a feature I'd like to have as a DM.

Can player's use chars from one campaign to the next? Or do they have to create chars from scratch each time they join a new campaign? I hope the former.

Can GM mode be used to create fully scripted campaigns that don' t require a DM? Or is it only possible to create live DM campaigns? It'd be nice if it can do both.

Looked really great!

Look at this context menu seen in this video here or here:
This somehow suggests a '[Save As...] / export' function of placeables and characters!? (edit: as seen here.)

Intigraty, I don't have time to screengrab right now... but I think I noticed in the clip that you could "extend on map" or something of the sort... this was near the beginning of the live stream, when he right clicked on the world map. I'd imagine this is similar to the functionality you request given it's name, but I could be way off base.

I think he was referring to the ability for players to save and re-use their own created characters across many different campaigns, not whether or not the GM could export/import created NPC's.



I also think that an NPC should be allowed to be "Bound" to the party and travel with them.


This - scene transitions should be added so that the GM doesn't have to manually change scenes - this could even be used to create an entire world that is explore-able without GM interaction.

Also, custom NPC dialog trees would be nice, I absolutely love writing dialog trees.



The ability to edit turn order would be nice - though if you only need it to force a player to skip his turn, applying the "Tripping" debuff to the character would be an adequate workaround.

Often times the characters asked for special checks and weren't penalized with any AP cost too. The GM needs a way to lower the AP of a player who attempted a special "off the books" action during combat.
The guy who passed his turn simply pooled those action points towards his next turn.

Well yes obviously. Oops.Although i quoted i was misreading that.
A system like NWN would be an option. There was either a server char vault (player can't locally edit char) or local char vault (player can import from his locally saved chars).

Importing all kinds of different player chars into the campaign can be also a headache for the GM. Too hard to control level differences, items etc. I personally as GM would always prefer to level and develop just inside the campaign.
Maybe templates for the looks (hint: steam workshop prefabs incl. mods), even though they are made fast imho, could be nice. Knowing your blueprint, leveling up should be fast.

I agree the possibility should be there, but restrictioning options or delete all XP / LVL / Items function might be handy then.

I imagine as the system develops they'll add a bunch of custom statuses for GMs to throw onto players that instantly take away AP and the like. I think it would already be possible to mod in such a status (basically an adrenaline effect with a negative AP).

@Morez: I hope there's some way to store characters at least locally. The Save/Export feature may actually work on PCs, although the PCs would be stored on the GM's computer in that case.

I noticed the same exact things during the stream!

There are bound to be a few restrictions in the game that won't give us freedom like traditional D&D will, but Larian have done an excellent job with the GM mode so far. I can't see why the suggestions you made wouldn't be considered.

I'm particularly interested in NPC's following the party. Let's say I'm no fighter- so I dump all my points into charisma & try to convince the people I meet in my travels to fight for me. It would be a hassle for the GM to control my NPC army. It would be a lot easier for them to simply have a follow command. This allows for more creativity/freedom.

It's a neat idea, but diplomatic coercion doesn't work that way - You can convince someone to aid you, yes - but the checks required to coerce them into performing dangerous aid, or lengthy aid increase the DC so much that it would be nigh untouchable unless the NPC had a positive attitude toward you.

And Intimidation doesn't allow you to force someone to do something dangerous against their will at all.

Though, this is all subject to what the GM will allow, of course, and also varies depending on the rule set you're using.

Well it all depends on context. If you're recruiting soldiers for a battle to save a town, it could be very reasonable. There's also plenty of room for mercenaries and whatnot.

The more interesting question is what the most appropriate "ruleset" will be for the game. Obviously the combat will be DOS2 based, but there's plenty of room to use whatever system for the roleplaying. Some systems might adapt better, though. Larian should probably brew their own default ruleset for DCs and how stats contribute and stuff like how death can be handled besides with res scrolls.

Would be nice to see an alternative to death where characters are instead knocked unconscious when they hit 0, and there could be similar thing like a death saving throw as in DnD5E (3 chances to save and stabilize).

Another big optional change could be to allow limited spellcasts of some abilities. One way to do this would be with source points, if we can raise the maximum number and make many skills require source points (more powerful ones requiring more). Rest and various other things could restore source points. I think we can already mod this in but a default option would be nice.

While I will continue to pine away for the next NWN2 with fully scriptable worlds and persistent servers, alas that is not to be. But that said, I am still excited about the DOS2 GM mode for what it is. And while I know this is going to be somewhat limited and require an active and accomplished GM, there are a couple basic things that I think would really help and perhaps are not too difficult to include.

Transitions

I think would go a long way to making the GM's job easier and also vastly improve immersion. You need a transition object and/or a transition element attached to a variety of objects where you link the transition. Include a transition on/off switch so the GM can activate and deactivate the transitions in the scene.

Vignette Launch

Similar to a transition, linking a Vignette to an object launches the linked Vignette. Closing a Vignette returns to the last scene. Again, being able to activate and deactivate the Vignette launches for a scene would be great.

Are we still doing new stretch goals ... :)

Where are virtual dices of DM ???... The quantity of players depend of DM or are only 4??

What?

Being able to build and run a PW would be awesome, but the GM mode as it stands will suit me just fine as it is exactly what I am looking for.
If the GM mode will allow to use areas with scripts, NPCs with dialogue etc it would be a big plus.

Transitions are a must for caves and dungeons.
Vingette launch would be awesome to have. (combined with scripts attached to the choices players make)

One concern I've seen with the GM mode from the various streams is that the combat is based around D:OS 2 gameplay. However, D:OS 2 gameplay is based around exploration, the freedom to wander back and forth, pursuing different quests as desired, and returning to town to get new equipment upgrades and buy new skills.

The GM mode has a bunch of small maps which players are locked into. Few of the maps have any vendors at all, much less skill vendors.

It also doesn't help that only combat XP is granted automatically, and the GM is required to manually give XP for any other method of problem solving. Even in the streams, this almost NEVER happened. Players tended to be stuck at level 1 with the same starting skills for the whole mini-campaigns. The designs for a tabletop D&D and D:OS 2 clash quite a bit.

There is absolutely nothing blocking the GM for doing so.
We created small maps because after a lot of playtest we found that DMing a group of people going nuts around a really big map was hard to handle as the GM.

GM can create bigger maps without any problem if he/she desire.
GM can create any kind of vendor selling any kind of skills.

For the XP, right now, yes, it has to be done manually. I guess that the streamers didn't felt like giving XP outside combat.

PS: Thanks everyone for the suggestions/feedback. We are reading everything

People of Larian, you're great. You could a make more dev comments though. Well forget it, maybe better concentrate on the game.

Here some more suggestions. I want to ...

• be able to lock doors, set DC, HP
• put traps on floor and placeables adjust type and spot DC
• set triggers for all kind of (in Editor premade) stuff, e.g. an ambush where you can set still invisible and inactive NPCs which do appear and get alive once someone triggered the trigger.
• scale,tint, rename (color) any NPCs, Monsters, placeables
• make use of prefab placeable groups created in the editor or imported from other users (steam workshop) (i really love the idea to create a platform to distribute user made prefab areas and easily import them into your module. is this on the fly actually? or has the module be redone)
• be able to fully rotate (xyz) placeables in the GM mode.
• assign any animation (sleeping, dancing) on NPCs aswell as on PCs (by force). Plus conditions like character is sleeping, drunken, blind
• use the mood/light functions (or blind effect) to really make it complete dark and force players to use torches and other light sources (are there torches)
• full weather control
• any possibility for import (plugin?) any kind of mini game and or other functions to the vignettes?
• be able to adjust / influence the APs during a fight
• use dice rolls just visible for GM (e.g. for making percentage rolls)
• set all kind of effects and any assign materials to objects and NPCs (How about the material maker in the editor this time. This had so much potential. Mabye also a chance to easily share this via steam workshop. Maybe some geeks will provide more stuff as I see huge potential in this. Unfortunately this wasnt used by the community for the first game so far)

this is my fast brain storm. i could proceed endlessly but the chances of inappropriate suggestions are increasing. Hope you find one of them helpful at least.

cheers