Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Imagining a DND 5E Conversion

The D:OS2 attributes are fairly similar to DnD 5e. Attributes could be renamed and existing effects either removed or scaled differently. Probably primary attributes would increase damage by 10-15% per point or so. Strength and dexterity should be able to affect hit chance, probably a 5% bonus per point, with a 50-70% hit chance by default. All armor would provide a dodge chance as a form of AC.

Memory would probably be replaced with charisma. Starting attributes amounts will be tweakable, with the GM probably being able to subtract attributes for values less than 10. Attribute gain with leveling can be changeable to 2 points every 4 level system (or 1 attribute every two levels, which IMO is a bit smoother of a progression).

To simplify things, I would suggest that the conversion of each point in an attribute above 10 to a roll bonus go from 1:1 (11 dex = +1, 13 dex = +3 bonus, etc.), rather than the 1:2 system (where 12-13 = +1, 14-15 = +2, etc.) I've always found this kind of inelegant,though it made sense to scale down numbers for tabletop play. Scaling down is less important when most things are automated, and a 1:1 ratio would be more intuitive.

DnD 5e uses a system of one action, one bonus action, reactions, and movement.

There's a couple ways to go implementing this sort of system: a 1 AP system, giving every character The Pawn talent (free 1 AP worth of movement, base movement amount would probably be doubled), and any sort of bonus action "skills" costing 0 AP.

There may have to be a way to limit bonus actions, or it would be an honor system. Unless there's some way to allow a character to continue their turn even with 0 AP, this has the downside that you would have to move and use your bonus actions first, and then your primary action. Otherwise, it would be fairly similar to the essential components.

All attacks and spells except bonus actions would be reduced to a 1 AP cost. Extra attacks would be 0 AP skills that you use before you main attack.

Hit chance and damage for all weapon attacks would use the current hit chance/damage system of D:OS2 to represent dice rolls.

Spell attack rolls are a bit tricky, since spells can't be dodged. Either spells could always hit, and take a damage reduction or something to compensate, or another solution.

There could be several custom skills defined for special attacks like shoving or grappling, or non-attack actions, like dodge (basically a +25-30% dodge status on yourself), disengage, help (grant an ally a hit chance buff or something). Dodge would essentially increase your dodge chance, disengage temporarily grant avoid opportunists talent. Dashing would be just using your action AP to move farther. Readying simple actions (like, I'll attack them if they come at me) may be possible, though that could be pretty complicated to script for more complicated things (I'll ready this spell and cast it on my ally if they are attacked.)

In general, most reactions will be a little tough, since a lot of reactions are things like "when a character attacks you, roll a dice to see if you can dodge/return attack/reduce damage/etc." Lots of reactions will probably need tweaks.


Initiative order could automatically randomized at the beginning of combat behind the scenes, taking into account dexterity. The GM could set a surprised status on characters which would essentially be a stun.

Likely not much other than oil would count as "difficult terrain", though the GM could apply a movement speed penalty if it seemed appropriate.

Cover would be difficult to implement, though the GM could potentially give characters a "covered" status which increases dodge when appropriate (e.g., standing on a balcony behind a low wall, shooting down at enemies).


A 2 AP system could also work, which would make action order less important, but there'd need to be ensure players only use one primary action per turn. Should be possible to do so with the mute and disarm statuses after using an action, though that's slightly clunky. Of course, the honor system works for that too. May be the best way to go about it though.

The armor system could be totally ditched in favor of a pure dodge and saving throw system, but I think a hybrid system could work here. I've already created a resist system that scales with remaining armor and other factors, and this would work nicely with DnD I think. All these saves would happen behind the scenes, but it would be nice if scripts could trigger a dice roll that would determine things, so there'd be a bit more of that DnD flavor. A command like:

RollDice(_Roll,_DiceSize,_Bonuses,_DC,_Character,INT:_AllSee) // This would show a dice roll of the dice size to either just that character or everyone if AllSee is 1. If the roll + bonuses was above the DC, it would count as a true statement for scripts.

Some things would be harder to give a saving throw. For example, I'm not sure how one would implement a dexterity saving throw on the damage a fireball deals. Maybe on casting a skill like firebal, every character within the caster range would roll to dodge, and gain a momentary 50% fire resistance if they succeed. Clunky, but could work. AOE saves are probably something not super important, just have to be balanced for.

The leveling system should be scalable to whatever rate the GM wants. Existing skill trees could be replaced with DnD classes, their existing bonuses nixxed or reduced. Or a sort of hybrid system could be adopted, where the existing D:OS2 abilities are largely retained, perhaps reduced in effect somewhat, in addition to the DnD class levels. This would offer more customization. In this case, though, the GM would have to manually provide the features for each level. Or, an inventory item could be used to trigger leveling up and automatically add certain features.

Implementing every spell and class feature would be a daunting task. There'd have to be somewhat of a hybrid system between existing skills and spells, at least until enough was implemented. Some classes will be easier to add than others, like monk, compared to a caster like a sorcerer, with dozens of spells and different ways to manipulate them.

A monk would either be unarmed or use swords, daggers, or other simple weapons, and simple clothes or robes. Probably there wouldn't really be a way or worth it to enforce this with the game systems, so instead the GM would just apply penalties to monks who used other weapons or armor. You'd gain a dodge bonus based on your dexterity and perception (wits).

At level 1 you'd gain a 0 AP bonus action skill that allows you to make a low-damage melee attack as a bonus action.

At level 2, you'd gain the ki feature, which would either use the source point system, or an inventory item that would measure how many remain ki points you have and depletes as us you use ki skills. You'd gain the Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind skills as skills that would use ki points when you use them. It should be possible to disable these skills or make them non-functional when you have no ki.

Functionally, Patient Defense would apply the Dodge effect to you, and Step of the Wind would either grant 50% movement bonus or the ability to avoid opportunity attacks, or possibly both, or it could be split into two seperate skills.

At level 3, you gain arrow reflection feature, which could be a little difficult to implement, but not necesarilly impossible. This may be the kind of thing where a GM would have to say, "Ok, I'm going to attack you with this archer, do you want to roll for a chance to reflect?" But maybe it could be automated somehow.

You also get to choose a monastic tradition. Let's say you choose Way of the Open Hand, which enhances your flurry of blows skill. You'd basically receive three different variations of flurry of blow, one to knock enemies back, one to knock them down, and another to disable their reactions and attack of opportunities.

Something like the Slow Fall feature at level 4, which let's you reduce falling damage, would probably be something the GM would account for in roleplayed scenes, rather than some combat feature that could be automated, but there's potential. For example, I'm imagining every character will have access to a short range leap that would typically be used to jump from a height down below, or across a gap. While I'm not sure if it would be possible to require a dice roll for the jump skill itself, you could roll to see if you take damage or fall down when jumping down, and slow fall could heavily mitigate these downsides.

And so on and so forth. As you can see, much can be replicated with skills. Several things might have to be roleplayed around, but overall a lot of it could be seamlessly automated.

To be totally honest though, a monk sounds like it would be a little boring to play combat-wise in the D:OS setting with those limited sets of skills. So I think there's still lots of room for homebrewing in additional monk skills, existing skills (e.g., crippling blow, whirlwind attacks, etc.) and features that are interesting and give them other things to play with in combat.

Many cleric spells are already represented in D:OS2 in some form, so this would be a fairly easy class to at least partially translate into D:OS2. Like the monk's ki system, spell slots could be represented with inventory items that indiciate remaining spell slots for each level. The memory system would also be fairly useful for the cleric, since they can only memorize a limited number of spells at once, though the GM might have to manually grant memory slots or something if slots are removed from the actual memory stat (This might be a bit tricky). At worst, all spells in the game will just cost 0 memory and it will be somewhat of an honor system about choosing spells to "memorize."

There are many rough corollaries among the water spells. Regeneration = cure wounds. Bless = a stronger version of the DnD bless. Rain = the create part of Create and Destroy Water. Magic Shell = Restoration. It's a judgment call about how much to change these spells to match the DnD versions. Bless is the most different of these listed, a strong single target spell vs. a weak multi target spell. I prefer the D:OS2 version, which would be much more balanced with spell slots anyway, but the DnD version could be added seperately.

Going through the rest of the level 1 spells, let's see what would be easy, and what tough.

Bane = reduce attack and saves of 3 enemies. Fairly easy, similar question of whether this could replace curse or be a variant.

Command = easy to make a status that can be saved against, but the GM would probably have to handle the behavior of the character since it can do many things.

Detect Evil and Good; Detect Magic; Detect Poison and Diseases = probably just spells that you just say that you use, rather than making actual scripted effects for. Maybe detect magic could make magical items not inside a container show a visual effect or something, but that's tough.

Radiant Bolt = easy, although there's no radiant damage. Probably would just do fire damage instead, maybe half fire and half piercing, or some other way to represent radiant damage. Would reduce character's dodge chance by 30% or so until it is attacked.

Healing Word = easy 0 AP bonus action heal.

Inflict Wounds = piercing damage attack (Necrotic damage = piercing in my book).

Purify Food and Drink = probably just a roleplay kind of spell, but some fancy scripting could make it automatically convert poisoned food into regular food, which would be pretty cool.

Protection from Good and Evil = a bit tough, but could be possible. May be possible to grant a status to a character which checks when certain character types attack them, and temporarily grant dodge chance, damage resistance and charm/fear immunity, though it's tough to make that actually effective without interfering with non-evil/good enemies if they are in the same fight. Most fights are probably with purely evil or good characters, so could be roleplayed around.

Sanctuary = Requiring a wisdom saving throw on attack would be hard to apply at the moment, but could be changed to just grant a 30% dodge chance and damage resistance or something, but disappears on the character attacking.

Magic Shield = Easy, just a +dodge status.

Turn undead can easily be created, basically a mass fear skill that only affects characters tagged as undead (characters have "tags" in root templates which can be checked by skills).

As the spells become more powerful and have more dramatic effects, they are harder to implement. Take Magic Circle, a spell that locks enemies of certain types within an area and makes them have disadvantage attack characters outside that circle, or vice versa, locking enemies outside of that circle and protectign characters within that circle. That's a lot of things to consider, so likely a more simplistic variation would have to do, where characters within an area would simply have reduced hit chance and reduced or 0 speed, or something of the sort. And of course the GM can always make enemies behave certain ways in consideration of player actions.

D:OS2 numbers (health, damage, etc.) quickly scale to become way larger than DnD numbers. D:OS2 will never be able to scale to exactly match DnD numbers, but the numbers could be reduced somewhat to get closer to that tabletop vibe.

There's ways to edit vitality and armor scaling, damage amounts, etc. In general, damage numbers would probably get toned down a little as a percentage of health, compared to the current game where one or two attacks can really cut you down. Then again, with more misses and fewer attacks overall, the current damage to vitality ratio might be fairly okay.

Every single enemy will need their stats reworked to match the new attribute system and proper values. This is something to be honed over time, and also subject to GM's discretion somewhat.

All these changes will break enemy AI, so a GM will always have to control enemies, or someone will have to rework the AI, which is no small feat.

Civil abilities could be replaced with the proficiency skills of DnD. I believe there's more skills from DnD than civil abilities, so a couple would either have to be merged or something, unless we can add brand new civil abilities. Basically you'd use these proficiencies to make rolls when appropriate, increasing your proficiency bonus to the skills when reaching the appropriate level.

I think this could work fine as a hybrid system, where the civil abilities are essentially kept as how they are, except civil points become more common. The gameplay effects (e.g., bartering granting 10% better prices) may be hard to change or remove, but hopefully we get the option to tweak them like we have with all the combat abilities.

Assuming we can add new talents, some of feats could be integrated. Several existing talents in the main game will be obsolete with the new system (e.g., elemental affinity, useless with all 1 AP skills), needing replacement anyway.

Many DnD spells require concentration, which means the effects of the spell end if you cast another spell, or if you take damage and fail a constitution roll. Frankly, I find this whole concept kind of obnoxious for the most part, but it also seems like an important way to balance casters.

In general it should be possible to automatically do a constitution check and make a fail when you take damage. For example, Bane requires concentration, so taking damage and failing a con save could make those negative statuses disappear. I'd probably prioritize the damage aspect of concentration over the one-spell-at-time aspect, which probably most GMs ignore anyway.

Advantage is rolling twice for a check and using the higher result, disadvantage rolling twice and using the lower. Advantage could be represented faithfully in some cases, as with manual checks. In many cases, advantage could simply translate to a 30-35% increase in the roll, like a 35% increased chance to hit or dodge, rather than performing two rolls behind the scene.

D:OS2 death feels really meaningless with resurrection scrolls laying around everywhere. The death saving throw system in DnD 5e would work well in D:OS2, where instead of dying immediately, you fall unconscious, and make d20 saving throws. This would pretty much be manually done. There could maybe a first aid skill that makes a roll to stabilize a target, but that could just as well be done manually.

Many DnD conditions are relatively similar to D:OS2 statuses. Some could be tweaked, like crippled becoming restrained, and also reducing dexterity and hit/dodge chance. Plenty of room to hybridize the systems and go either way.

Naturally loot will have receive large tweaks to fit within the new systems (e.g., granting stat bonuses would have to become extremely rare.) Treasure tables can be redone to make any sort of magic items quite rare, or magic loot could remain fairly common with minor effects. Probably unique items the GM makes would be the best way to handle loot.

A rested status already exists, though probably this should be split into short and long rests. It could be scripted such that long and short rests automatically restore features like spell slots and ki and whatnot according to the character's level.