Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback the Armour system in D:OS2

I have seen a lot of criticism towards the current state of the armor, but not a dedicated thread, therefore I start the one.

One of the most discussed problems here is the existence of 2 types of armour on your foes - physical and magic, which forces to build a character as well as the entire party around one specific type of damage, therefore limiting choices.

To solve it, several changes and additions may be done (I will start with the most radical ones).

1) Merge two armour types into one.

2) Let reduce both types of armour at once: whenever physical armour is reduced, magic armour is reduced as well for 50% of the damage dealt.

3) Make it reasonable to remove the both kinds of armour: damage to a target with all armours destroyed increases by 150-200%. Enemies don't suffer from this debuff if they don't have one or both armours by default.

4) Make more enemies with one armour specialization - currently most enemies have equally strong physical and magic armours. If 35% of enemies had a very low magic armour and another 35% had a very low physical armour, there would be some space for proper targeting and therefore a mixed party would have more ground.

5) Let classes deal both kinds of damage from the early game.
Currently you can find some weapons with like 20% bonus to damage as magic damage; currently this is the least useful weapon feature because a warrior's target will anyway die before it's magic armour is consumed this way. Instead, let some weapons have an ability to switch to a magic form. For example, you find a sword of lightning with 10 physical damage and an ability "form of lightning". The ability costs 1 AP and lasts forever until it is toggled back - even after the battle. After you enable the ability, the damage is 2 physical plus 10 air; now you "form of lightning" is replaced with an ability "physical form" which allows you to return the sword to its normal state.
Now the only intellect-based physical class is the Necromancer. As for the others, let them have a couple of spells dealing physical damage. And give some magic damage skills to Necromancers.

6) Skill crafting. I hope the Devs have already found a solution in skill crafting, and it will be possible to create skills that turn 100% of magic damage into physical one and vice versa.

In my opinion, the best solution will be a mix of items # 4, 5 and 6 as they have minimum impact on the game design fundamentals plus # 3 because I it would add to tactics.

These are actually good suggestions. I was skim-reading some of the other comments on the armour issue, and was convinced there was a real problem with the current two-bar system when people reported specialising in pure physical parties or pure magic parties just to get around it.

Your suggestion number 2 is nice, since it keeps some creativity intact. I posted on a separate armour thread about the need for collateral damage when attacking armour, since it’s too one-note and robotic at the moment. It needs to be messier. I’d suggested that attacking armour always damages a % of health as collateral damage. I believe someone else requested something similar.

An attack on physical armour that damages a portion of magic armour would also work for me, in messing things up in an interesting way. It makes little sense, but realism really isn’t important, in my view, in designing an entertaining combat system.

It could also be merged into 1 bar as you suggested, and there could still be magical and physical ‘armour’ – but instead of granting you magical or physical hit points, it could grant you a % resistance to magical or physical attacks that’s factored into the attack on your 1 armour bar, depending on the attack involved.

I definitely think the armour system is highly innovative, if flawed, and wouldn’t want to see a fresh idea burned down completely, as some seem to favour.

Personally, I’m now leaning towards one armour bar, with the ability to build up physical and magical resistances that negate the damage to the one armour bar accordingly (ideally the magical resistances would also be categorical: pyro, hydro, necro, etc).

Thank you for your response. Actually, I was myself sceptical about having only 1 kind of armour, but if there will be enemies with either high physical/magic resistance (instead of armour), the problem is solved. This will require popping up numbers of damage whenever you hover the cursor over your target in the sake of convenience, but this feature would be highly appreciate even in the current version, so it should not make more job for the Devs. A sufficient loremaster ability might be required for predicting the final damage range.

Also we should take into account that the player party will get the unified armour as well. As a result, strength-based outfit will grant physical resistance along with armour while intellect-based one will grant resistance to specific magic. In this case a common Lvl 1 plate armour should give as much physical resistance as Lvl 10 plate armour. Equally, protective spells will grant lesser amount of armour but in addition they will give respective temporary resistances.

Then, at the moment Strength and Intellect provide with +2% to respective armours. Instead, they might give multiplicative bonus to resistances.

Well, it is possible to make a good system with 1 armour type, but I am afraid we are a bit late for this. Actually, my main hope is about skill crafting and weapons, but - I repeat - they should be available from the very start of the campaign and they should totally transform damage type instead of splitting it 50% to 50%. In the latter case it will be senseless.