Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Sneak 5 balancing discussion thread

Man.. everything in this game is boring and cheesy. You have to purposely make your build "not cheesy" to have any kind of challenge at all.

But still, the first 10-30 hours before you learn some tricks to become overpowered, are certainly worth the price. This is very good game, and after few months of patching and working on balance, I hope I will be able to call it great.

I never got teleport spell and invisibility spell before mid to late game, and I still haven't gotten my sneak to 5 on even my rogue character. Maybe you should let the choice of skills and specializations be based on what you want for your characters, instead of based on min/maxing?

I never got teleport spell and invisibility spell before mid to late game, and I still haven't gotten my sneak to 5 on even my rogue character. Maybe you should let the choice of skills and specializations be based on what you want for your characters, instead of based on min/maxing?

I actually am interested in arbitrary rules as I am about to do my first run with the game. I've been snooping the forums to learn a bit first, without looking at spoilers of course. I am glad to learn that this is something I should avoid for maximum gratification and minimum cheese flavor.

Looks like I won't be abusing Sneak.

So far I am here;


Rule 1) Do not rely upon/abuse Sneak 5
Rule 2) Do not combine Lone Wolf with Glass Cannon on same char

What I want is balanced combat without having to make arbitrary rules for myself to gimp my characters on my end.

Currently, it's optimal to get Sneak 5 on every character if you want the easiest combat experiences.

Do you actually play this game or just theorycraft?

Even with Sneak at 1AP, here's how it breaks down...
Build investment: 15 ability points in Sneaking, 1 talent in Guerilla
AP investment: +1AP per attack, because sneaking always breaks after you attack. This varies widely based on the type of attack used, it could means your attacks are using 50% more AP, it could mean they're using 25% more, I guess with special attacks like Flurry it could be as low as 12.5% more, although I'm not sure whether Flurry breaks Sneaking before it hits or not.
Situational: One doesn't simply enter sneak mode. You need to get yourself out of vision first, which often means spending even more AP on movement in order to get outside of vision cones and/or other setup (such as creating smokescreens or inflicting the Blind status). So 1AP is the absolute minimum AP investment involved.

To make it even more situational, missing makes enemies turn around. What this means in practice is: the harder the enemy, the more AP you need to spend to get the Guerilla bonus. This makes Guerilla a "win more" mechanic; it's most efficient against the easier content which you don't really need it for.

In return for all of that, you get double the damage. Now if you're spending 50% more AP to get that double damage (daggers), that's 33% more damage per AP; if using two-handers (least "more AP" for default attacks), that's 60% more damage per AP; if you're spending 12.5% more (which is best case scenario), that's 78% more damage.

Now let's compare that with 15 points in One-Handed (or some other similar weapon ability) and Anaconda as your talent. That's 60% increased damage. Assuming you had 25% in increased damage beforehand (say, 15% from Leadership and 10% from a +1 boost), that's 48% more damage (in other words, a 1.48 multiplier). It doesn't increase your AP expenditure at all, and it's not situational at all.

The comparison comes out roughly equal. Although Sneaking doesn't really get its big payoff until it hits rank 5, once it does it provides roughly the same benefit as an ordinary, boring weapon talent. That's not overpowered at all.

If there is anything exploitable when it comes to sneaking, the only thing it could be is: having an easier time maxing out Sneaking using bonuses from gear. It's normally difficult to track down items with +1 Bow or +1 Two-Handed (and especially +1 T-ability), but it's much easier to get +1 Sneaking on multiple items. There is a chance the item affix is too available. However, I would view such an occurrence as an itemization issue, not as fundamental Sneaking balance issue.

Do you actually play this game or just theorycraft?

Even with Sneak at 1AP, here's how it breaks down...
Build investment: 15 ability points in Sneaking, 1 talent in Guerilla
AP investment: +1AP per attack, because sneaking always breaks after you attack. This varies widely based on the type of attack used, it could means your attacks are using 50% more AP, it could mean they're using 25% more, I guess with special attacks like Flurry it could be as low as 12.5% more, although I'm not sure whether Flurry breaks Sneaking before it hits or not.
Situational: One doesn't simply enter sneak mode. You need to get yourself out of vision first, which often means spending even more AP on movement in order to get outside of vision cones and/or other setup (such as creating smokescreens or inflicting the Blind status). So 1AP is the absolute minimum AP investment involved.

To make it even more situational, missing makes enemies turn around. What this means in practice is: the harder the enemy, the more AP you need to spend to get the Guerilla bonus. This makes Guerilla a "win more" mechanic; it's most efficient against the easier content which you don't really need it for.

In return for all of that, you get double the damage. Now if you're spending 50% more AP to get that double damage (daggers), that's 33% more damage per AP; if using two-handers (least "more AP" for default attacks), that's 60% more damage per AP; if you're spending 12.5% more (which is best case scenario), that's 78% more damage.

Now let's compare that with 15 points in One-Handed (or some other similar weapon ability) and Anaconda as your talent. That's 60% increased damage. Assuming you had 25% in increased damage beforehand (say, 15% from Leadership and 10% from a +1 boost), that's 48% more damage (in other words, a 1.48 multiplier). It doesn't increase your AP expenditure at all, and it's not situational at all.

The comparison comes out roughly equal. Although Sneaking doesn't really get its big payoff until it hits rank 5, once it does it provides roughly the same benefit as an ordinary, boring weapon talent. That's not overpowered at all.

If there is anything exploitable when it comes to sneaking, the only thing it could be is: having an easier time maxing out Sneaking using bonuses from gear. It's normally difficult to track down items with +1 Bow or +1 Two-Handed (and especially +1 T-ability), but it's much easier to get +1 Sneaking on multiple items. There is a chance the item affix is too available. However, I would view such an occurrence as an itemization issue, not as fundamental Sneaking balance issue.

Hm, sneak at 5 is basically the highest you can go, isn't it?
I'd expect it to be somewhat powerful, but I guess that some high-level chars might get better chances to spot sneaking chars even with sneaking 5.

The discussion is a bit strange however, I'll never understand the argument "skill x is so strong you absolutely need it on EVERY CHARACTER. Now that I have it on EVERY CHARACTER, the game is too easy. BUHUUU, fix it, it's broken."