Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Civil skill frustration reduction suggestions

It seems like Larian does want to give us build and party flexibility, evidenced by having the built in respec as well as picking a class for each companion. However, when most of the companions you recruit are already level 2 or higher, you are faced with either having wasted civil points until respect much later, or picking a class that you don't really want to start as just to not gimp the civil points.

Any of these suggestions would help a lot I think:
1. Move the second civil point from level 2 to 3 or 4, or, bring up the level 6 one to 4 or 5
2. Just give a few more civil points
3. Have newly joined companions start as level one of the chosen class, let the player place the points
4. Make telekinesis more useful by allowing it to pickpocket people when combined with thievery (like a sneak alternative)

I just feel frustrated that the way it is, even in a 4 person party, you really have to sacrifice some skills or just pray for early item drops that have +skills you want. This would not be a big deal except the skills are not equal in power, thievery and lucky charm, or barter, are way stronger than others, leaving room only for persuasion MAYBE... the vast majority of people are going to neglect loremaster and telekinesis.

Personally, I believe the racial civil skills should be removed. It's really weird, Larian removed things like lizards having +1 Int because it shoehorned them into mage roles, likewise for other races being shoehorned into rogues or warriors etc. But then they kept dwarves having +1 Sneak, humans having +1 Bartering, elves having +1 Loremaster and lizards having +1 Persuasion which just does the same thing, you're always better off having the lizard/human of the group be the NPC/store intermediary, the dwarf should always be the pickpocket etc.

As for what you're saying, I fully agree civil points need to be brought in at earlier levels and maybe even increased in number. It really feels like I'm limited in what I can craft character-wise until I hit Lv20 which is end-game.

I've found that setting it to every 3rd level, removing the offset (so you get your first post-creation point at lvl 3), and having two points at lvl 1 works great. I also changed "All Skilled Up" to give 1 Combat and 2 Civil points (but I also changed talent rate). So far that feels pretty good, but if you min/max and pool points a lot into individual characters, it's probably possible to abuse it. After all, it's possible to have 5 points by lvl 5 or so.

You're focusing on the symptom and not the cause. What would be better is for party members to NOT automatically allocate all their points from their level-ups after they join your party. Just give you the experience so they reach the level to match yours and let you allocate the points manually.

Right now I'm dealing with this by ignoring all sources of XP after waking up on the beach, then using the ladder to get into the fort and do all my recruiting before reaching level 2. This works for everyone except Ifan, though, as you can't recruit him until after somehow resolving the Shakedown quest, which gets you to level 2.

I've dealt with the problem in a similar fashion to Stabey's and I strongly disagree with him that this is what should be done. It would be better to just presure Larian to remove the auto level feature or just get a mod which disables said feature.

My second sentence was agreeing that the best thing would be that the auto-allocating feature be removed. But unless something changes, the only real workaround is what I've suggested.

Yes I totally agree. Your suggestion is super helpful for getting characters at level one (about to start another new game now lol), but the optimal solution would be no auto level.

I feel like this game Larian may as well make a bot that play for player. It's better that way and more suitable for their "vision" of the game.

TWO BOTS BATTLING AT MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY IN MULTIPLAYER! MUH!