Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Attributes, Skills, Talents and Traits Discussion

Well they mentioned several times that nothing has been balanced; so I'm not sure one should be surprise at the total lack of balance between classes and skills. I'm not too sure how much feedback they want (at this point) with regards to balance issues. That is a very open comment they might want a lot of feedback or just a little. Also things might be unbalanced in one direction at low levels but as the game scales things might balance in the other direction at high levels. I sort of like this scheme in some games where you have to give some thought as to whether you need something now or later.

I think that Larian probably wants a LOT of feedback on balance issues - why wouldn't they? How else are they to know what is fun and rides the line between too hard and too boring?

It's true that we don't know how things will be balanced at high levels, but there's nothing we can do about that, and there are obvious issues with even the balance at low levels.

I'd love to see a viable monk type class you could build with Unarmed skills. Puncha puncha puncha!

Ok so my small little opinon on the current class system is, that it is extremly old school. I think you can only conjure up such a system today if you activly averting your eyes from other successful games.

1.) Bought Skillbooks learnable at certain level
=> forces people to look for vendors who sell a skill
=> gives the possiblity to put hidden skills in the game as monster drops, quest drops etc.
=> makes it impossible to plan the layout of your hero (e.g. you dont know what this hero will get, because you dont see what books exist ingame)
=> lets you put requironments on skill aquisition beyond character stats

What i like on this idea:
The posibility to not let people know what will come. Problem is, the times have changed. This idea was good 20 years ago. Today everyone will at once look up available skills on a site like gamefaqs, where you find them, and how to get them.

So what is my suggestion here?
Simple add Skill Trees like in Diablo 2, but keep complex requirment that can be secret. Some may require you to find itmes like "hidden kagebushi no juitsu scroll" that you can unlock them, others need a trainer, other require the completion of a quest. While at the same time, the player can see what would be possible and is in the game. So he can plan out how he wants his characters to develop.

In addition you get prerequirments for certain skills. So it is easier to understand whats going on.

For example the ice skill tree looks like this:


Ice Bolt (level 1, single target) -------> Ice Ball (Level 5, area of effect)
|
|
|
\/
Ice Lance (Level 5, single target, more damage)

Maybe the skill trees also unlock hybrid skilltrees like, FrostFire, FrostWarrior, NatureSurvivalist, etc you get the idea. The Skill Trees don't need to be super huge with 20 skills on them.

For warrior there could be either fighting style and/or weapon type and/or damage type skill trees.
Weapon Based:
Axe Skill Tree (special aoe, halfcircle, circle)
Chop, Cut Down, Execute

Sword Skill (special aoe, straight line, rectangles)
Parry, Feint, Slash, Strike

Hammer Skill Tree (special aoe, cone, chance of knock downs)
Devastate, Pulverize, Smash, Thunderclap

Shield Skill Tree
Shield bash, Block, etc.

Fighting Style Based:
Berserker Skill Tree
Berserker Stance, Bloodrage, Frenzy

Defender Skill Tree
Endure, Guard, Intervene, Disable

Fighter Skill Tree
Bleeds, whatever

Damage Type Skill Trees
Slashing Skill Tree
Pick skills that fit in you get the idea hopefully what i write here.


2. Character Attributes / Item Atributes / Damage & Defense output

Change the current system to a system where damage is always based on the weapon damage including all skills and spells.

A mage should be just as dependent on a good dps weapon then a warrior. The same goes for armor for defense. Dont add weird extra attributes to weapons so that they are good for a mage like a rusty grey sword with +10 to battle magic. Thats a not good game design. Take a look at world of warcraft or diablo 3.

Interesting post, Janju.

The Divinity series have never used skill trees, they've been about picking the skills you want, without needing to get a point into Ice Bolt if you only really want Ice Ball. Prerequesites are an especially bad fit for a game where (currently) your only way to get new skills is to get lucky finding a merchant who sells them.

Other than that, I agree that the skill system needs some work.

Right now, skills don't have a level requirement, only a requirement of a certain level of ability points in certain class skills (Way of the Warrior, Way of the Survivor, [Battle/Defensive/Summoning/Fire/Water/Earth/Air] Magic.

It might be a good idea to limit the amount of ability points you can manually put into an ability equal to your character level, NOT counting bonuses from Talents, Traits, and Gear.

So a level 5 character can only spend 5 ability points into Fire Magic, BUT If they took the Pyromaniac Talent, and have the "Righteous" trait (is this the one I'm thinking of?), and a +1 Fire Magic Ring, then they are casting Fire Magic at Level 8 - three levels above their normal maximum. It makes those extra bonuses really count for something.

Plus, by limiting the normal amount of attribute points as equal to your character level, it makes it easy to balance the power level of skills, by making them require higher amounts of points into X ability, which typically requires them to be at X level.

*********

On that note, the "Skilled" Talent which gives you two ability points to spend on anything should probably be deleted, given that most of the other talents give you only +1 to a SPECIFIC skill, making that one as valuable as two normal Talents.

The Skilled talent isn't as overpowered as you might think.

The specific-skill talents let you put a skill above the level you are allowed to spend, whereas Skilled only lets you place two points under normal rules. So Pyromaniac will let you get Fire Magic to 11, but Skilled won't let you take it beyond 10.

As long as there are level restrictions for how many points can be placed, and the specific-skill talents still can go beyond them, that additional one skillpoint over cap can be worth more than two to distribute normally.

Intelligence and speed are where it's at, though, as well as any action point boosts. I've started three times so far. My last go was:

Both characters with Intelligence 10. I took both of the action point talents and the stat point talent, and once in game immediately raised Intelligence to 11.

One character is Ice/Air, the other Fire/Earth. With the number of skill points you get starting at 11 Intelligence, they each maxed both of their elements early. One has max pickpocket, lockpick, and stealth as well as fire/earth, and the other has the dodge ability (Reflexes?) and is considering picking up some resistances. Now that I've been rolling in skill points long enough, I gave them their last level's point in Speed, since 6 speed vs 5 gives an extra action point.

I'm not really sure where they are on the power curve versus ranged or melee specialists (I'll try those next, though being gear dependent it is harder to get a solid idea of where they stand), but the high-intelligence start certainly feels exploit-y.

A fair point, especially if Ability points (before bonuses) do get capped at character level.

As for Intelligence, yeah, I didn't go all the way to 11, but even playing with the standard Wizard template, I was rolling in Ability points, and often kept lots around in reserve because I was finding it so easy that I didn't need to spend them. One of my level 6 Wizards did eventually cap out most-all his or her primary Abilities.

I've written it already in the general feedback thread, but this one here is probably a better place to discuss it:

The movement stat is currently working a bit backwards.
The way it it implemented in 1.0.47, characters that would benefit most from movement (melee fighters), get the least, while chracters that could do better without (mages, rangers) get a lot.
E.g. my fighter had 0.5 (at some point even significantly less until I realized that the particular combination of armor was just too much), while my mage had 2.

Now I can understand the idea that heavy armor will reduce movement, but give you better survivability when being hit, so I guess a certain reduction makes sense.
However, the penalty seems to get quite large fast and there's no way to counter it.
The rush skill is nice, but too limited.
The quick and dirty fix would be to simply reduce the penalty on all the equipment pieces.
A more elegant solution might be to introduce means to offset the penalties:
There's allready an armor ability in the warrior tree - it could be made to reduce the penalty.
On top of it, that also sounds like a good possibility for a talent.
I could also imagine a skill that temporarily boosts movement in combat at the expense of a few AP in one round.

For mages I don't see any reason why their equipment should routinely give a bonus to movement.
I think on average they should stay around 1, excluding some unique magical items of course.

Rangers/Thieves might benefit from good movement when leveled as a light and fast melee character.
I think that for such chars good movement makes the most sense, but again I wouldn't give huge boni through equipment alone but rather through abilities and talents

Well, I've finished playing the alpha and I must say that wizards, as I'm sure many people have said already, are too OP at the moment.
-Due to their Intelligence boost they get more ability points. And they don't have to dump any points into other stats like speed, perception or consitiution to be any good.
-Warriors and even rangers skills are too underwhelming compared to the range, AOE and power of the wizard's spells.

Suggestions:
There's gotta be some incentive to play those other two classes.
Maybe every primary stat - Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence should only give extra ability points in their corresponding ability tree? Like, increase Strength and you get more Warrior abilitity points?
The other suggestion would be to get rid of the ability boosting altogether, but then the given points number must be very well balanced.
The Warrior class to be effective must have more action points and better initiative in battle to be effective - otherwise in most battles he doesn't seem to be able to run to the enemies fast enough, because ranger or wizard already used their skills and killed everyone.

Actually in my experience fighters become quite strong once you find some decent weapon for them.
The starting equipment is pretty bad and unfortunately they depend a lot more on equipment than wizards.
With some good weapon however, I could quite reliably kill all enemies, and quite fast, too.
The second advantage of wizards is of course that they have AoE spells, which the fighter lacks.

I like the idea of points in the Armour skill decreasing the movement penalty - perhaps when you have enough points in it that you pass a certain milestone (50% of the cap or something), you get a benefit to movement in heavy armour. "You are now so used to wearing the heavy armour that you move faster wearing it than you do without."


I assume that the Crafting skill will eventually be required to even attempt more difficult crafts - simple combinations will work with Crafting level 0, but a lot of other things will eventually require higher and higher skills in Crafting. Attempting to do that without the skill and your character says something "I'm not skilled enough to do that. [Crafting 2 Required]."


Maybe your pickpocket skill could also be used to pick up some of the land mines I see lying around (which should also be craftable, with a high enough Crafting skill. Maybe combine mines with various Essences: Air mine = stunning mine, Earth mine = poison mine, water mine = freezing mine, fire mine = explosive mine). The lighter the touch of your fingers, the better the chance of success - although chance of successful pickpocketing of a mine is capped at 85%.


Higher Sneak skill should also increase your movement while in Sneak mode, letting someone in Sneak mode move faster while remaining undetected. EDIT: I am dumb. It already does this. That's good.

Huh, ...maybe? I don't mind at all having 5 points in a minor attribute for a particular build on higher levels, but at the beginning it all seems very samey to me from afar.

And assuming the attribute descriptions I've seen aren't misleading, Constitution and Speed determine the total amount of Vitality and Action Points, respectively, whereas Intelligence grants you a particular amount of Ability Points at level-up without retroactive gains?

If so: Do not like. A) Because of lack of consistency, and B) because it practically forces you to pump points into Intelligence early on (while not doing the same for any other attribute, cf. A)).

Many people have asked "how do you lockpick?" The answer is that you need to have a point into Lockpicking AND buy a skillbook about Lockpicking (from the Arrow Seller in Cyseal market). The dual-gating is confusing and unintuitive. Instead of needing to find and buy certain skill books, how about this:

- The Lockpicking skill is automatically acquired once you put 1 point into Lockpicking.
- The Pickpocketing skill is automatically acquired once you put 1 point into Pickpocketing.
- Telekinesis is NOT automatically learned when you have 6+ points into Intelligence, it's acquired once you put a point into Telekinesis.

OR alternatively, keep the skill books to learn skills, but you can't put points into those skills until you buy the skill book, which teaches you one level in that ability automatically. That doesn't quite fix things because Talents can increase those abilities, so you could still have 1 point and be confused about why you can't lockpick.

Hi all,
I agree strength reducing the move penalty from heavy armors would be a nice thing. Even with 11 STR, my warrior move at 1/3 speed of my wizard.
Generally, I think it would be nice if hard requirements for gear would be reduced or entirely removed, but not meeting said requirements would give penalties instead of bonuses (eg: movespeed, defense/dodge and willpower malus for a mage wearing a plate too heavy for him).

I don't know if the scaling of Whirlwind and Flurry is not working or something but in the current version these skills are terrible and a waste of AP. For instance, my warrior who was hitting for an average of 10dmg with the normal attack was doing 6-7 on average with Flurry. I haven't tested with my crazy good crafted 100-155 dmg sword unfortunately.
About the skill points thingie, I think it would be nice if stats gave a % reduction to related skillset, like for instance, Strength for warrior skills, but obviously they'd have to change the entire scaling. Another issue would be that players get leftover points after levelling up and QQ would ensue, though there are workaround for that, like replacing the 1-11 number with a progression bar (just an exemple, I sure prefer precise numbers).

Yeah, those skills are quite unimpressive, have a high chance of missing, and Flurry has to be used at point-blank range, closer than even normal attacks.

Sorry but i have to disaggree here. The skill system that is in place doesn't encourage you to "pick the skills you want". The current system is trivial i the way that you will be able to learn/use any skill that you can with your stats.

The specialisation in the current class system is done by putting "points" into "attributes" that you hope will give you access to the skills you want. You want better ice magic? Yeah i put my points into the ice magic attribute.

All of this results in players who have to deal with points spending while they have to know what these points will give them. Which is crap, because in the end this is a complex mathematical problem to solve. Which is better now 2 points into attrbute A or 2 points in attribute B?

The better system is to give people choices which they can make without being a scientist and leave the math in the background.

What people want is build a character that fits their taste and for this a "point and attribute based" System isnt good.

Yes and no. Now when i spend a lot of skill points into one thing like fire magic, but i cannot find the best fire spells but find air and water spells all the time, then it will be very frustrating.

In addition i have following problems with the current system:
1. When you want to have an super ice spell which requires you to have 50 ice magic, then you automatically losing those points for lets say the fire magic spell that you also wanted.

2. Now the thing here is, with ice magic 50 you can get any ice spell with less requirement then that.

3. Now lets say i want to have the skill "Ice Blade" which gives your melee weapon an enchant. Then you could get ALL ICE SPELLS with lower ice magic requirements that you probably dont want, because they are ranged or whatever. While in a talent tree based system you may pick only the melee based ice spells if they were in a single branch.

Generally spoken
The thing i would suggest is to reduce the attributes by a lot. All these attributes and talents for what are they really good? The are just an distraction from the role playing, fighting, exporing and puzzel solving.

You know i dont have a problem with a attribute system when it makes sense, but in this game it's really like there is no system. Just a lot of attributes and telents for the attributes and talents sake.

Lets take a look at the most successful Roleplaying games of the last years:

Dragon Age has talent trees that are supportet by basic attributes. A very good system imho. It lets the player get the skills he wants while being complex enough to leave some room for the number crunchers.


Border Lands 2 and Diablo 2, they are both using a very similar system. Basic Stats + Talent trees.


World of warcraft, talent trees + glyphsystem + stats


Later blizzard figured out that talent trees are too limited and they wanted to make an more flexible system


Shadow run


Beyond Divinity, basic attributes, spells are acquired with books?


Divinity II Skills are grouped into 'schools' which correspond to traditional roles, but all skills are available to all characters, allowing mixing between these roles.


To sum it up all of these games had designers who found ways to make developing an character more appealing. The presentation of this core element in DD:O is like its not even there.

I was in error, the skill system in D:OS does use prerequisites, albeit simple ones.

Showing examples of successful RPG's that used prerequisite systems doesn't prove that prerequisite systems are the best, merely that they used prerequisite systems. They weren't successful only because they used prerequisite systems.

I do agree that this system is quite different from previous games in that instead of points spent levelling specific skills, you get points that level an entire CLASS of skills all at the same time.

The balance needs so much changing at the moment that I don't know if it's a good system or not.




Aaaaannd the problem is? If true, that's consistent with the previous Divinity games.

I agree that the spell system could be made more transparent. Right now you can't even open tabs to see what spells are possible, they're locked without any points. That is not consistent with previous Divinity games, and it does make it harder to plan for getting certain skills. They could list everything, let you see all the tabs, but make it clear that this spell requires X points in Ability A or Ability B.




So, don't buy the spellbooks for the other Ice skills if you only want Ice Blade?

But nobody wants another <fill a game you mentioned here>. Thats the point why D:OS has been funded. You might disagree with that, but fact is: the people loved the old divinity games and most likely this "science" to put some points to their character because they have an other understanding about roleplaying then you did maybe. I'm not saying your point is dumb or invalid, but it's not what divinity is expected to be. As you might have seen: the alpha audience was happy with the current stage and has a feeling where the whole thing leads. There are points with rough edges and wishes, but it is what the people expected. Now you are asking to make another diablo/whatever style skillsystem? Good luck with that.

For further discussion:

1.
The main character screen. Perfect in every way. It shows me my armor, my equipment, my main stats my resistances, my damage
- hit chance, physical resistance and dodge chance missing, but ok

2.
The skill system, clunky in small windows, overburden, intransparent

3.
Spellbook, hardly any information about what the spells are influenced by, no conection to the rest of the character sheet.

=> What i try to say here is that 2. and 3. should be remade so that it is better to understand and more appealing. Ideally a new Dialog or bigger tabpage which better shows what influences what.

Another thing i would really like to see changed is that all healing, regenerating and resurrecting is not water but LIGHT MAGIC. This would fit in perfectly because there is already SHADOW MAGIC in the game.

@Stabbey
The two things that i find most impropriate concerning the skill/spell system are:
1. Skills have to be bought
better would be that you dont have to buy any skills and you simply get them when you met its requirments.
2. The presentation of the whole skill/character development


@WintermuteX
How can you speak not only for you but for someone else? No where in the kickstarter page is written that Larian will recreate a game system that is 10 years old. What is written there is
- deep character development system
- develop your character(s) to fit your playstyle using our classless skill and stats system
- There are six primary stats and manipulating them in combat can lead to surprising results. For instance, lowering the intelligence of an enemy with a curse spell, will cause it to walk into pools of lava (uttering words like "look, how shiny"). Or if you lower an enemy's dexterity, it has a much higher chance of falling down when it crosses an ice surface, forcing it to skip its next turn. Or...

All this doesn't mean that there will be no talent tree or skill tree!

Even fallen enchantress added skill trees recently and its so good for the game:


There are so many ways to present the skills and its requirements:

Merry Christmas everyone.
I don't want any skill tree in D:OS, it won't make me enjoy the game more because suddenly "omg it's more like DA/Wow/Whatever!!!!".

And Janju please stop spamming these screenshots, I'm sure everyone here knows what a skill tree is.