Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Traps/Triggers, Fire and Poison - Character Idiocy

Something that I'm getting really annoyed about, the inconsistent way your characters react to traps and area effects.

1. Your party is walking along and one of them calls out, "Careful now - that's a trap!" and then they blithely walk right over it and detonating it, or triggering a pressure pad. Once a trap has been sighted and they're moving from a stationary position, they'll happily walk around it, but when they're already in motion they're incapable of avoiding it?

I can probably assume that it's a pathing problem, with the pathing being decided upon the moment that you click on a location to move to, but can't we be given an option so that they'll halt rather than just keep stumbling on into their explosive doom?

2. Outside of combat your party members will happily navigate around fire and poison areas, in combat it becomes a straight line race to reach the point you clicked with no thought of injury. I've seen NPC characters avoiding these obstacles, during combat, so why not party members?

Why not give an option to have obstacle avoidance on, by default, and if you need a character to charge through you hold down a key to switch into that mode? It's really annoying trying to navigate around these obstacles, only to find you misjudged the path by a few pixels and still set someone on fire.

1) Your party avoids traps automatically but not pressure plates. You have to guide them around them. Also your chars automatically avoid dangerous ground effects apart from icy ground (which is a bit inconsistent but not a big deal).

2) What's so difficult in guiding your characters around dangerous areas in combat? The game uses a direct path because there are resistancies in this game. A character with 100% fire resistancy can just walkt through lava without being harmed. And with normal poison and fire areas and stuff you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth to spare action points (direct way)and cause damage to yourself or whether you want to go around manually which needs usually more action points to avoid damage. If the system would automatically avoid dangerous areas in combat you wouldn't have that chance to decide for yourself. You would be forced to use more action points, even if you have high resistancies or immunities against certain ground/area effects...

Yeah, I really think you need to re-read my original post:

I was talking about spotting traps whilst already moving, if your characters are walking a route that will take you over newly revealed traps then they will do so; I stated that your party will avoid them if they already stationary and you then start moving, what I want is for them to stop when they spot a trap whilst they are already moving.

Again, in combat, I explained that I can understand why you might want to move in a straight line, I would like an option which allows you to choose to have your characters avoid treading in fire or poison areas. I said that I have tried navigating around these areas, but sometimes you find that you still catch the edge of them even when trying to avoid them.

This isn't rocket science, it's common sense options.

Hm, I don't remember that from my playthrough tbh. My party always tried to avoid traps even if already moving and traps weren't discovered yet. But if that isn't the case for you it should be fixed indeed if that's technically possible or feasible.


Well, it seems it's more lacking precision or that you want to walk too close by thes areas to spare AP which is the problem here. I have no problem whatsover to guide my chars around dangerous areas tbh. Also what you request is almost impossible to implement. What if various effects are in place in a certain area? Hotkeys for "avoid all", "avoid fire", "avoid ice"... and so on or how should that work? The system is imo pretty good how it is. I gives you all the freedom without limiting you in any possible way in combat.


Sorry, I am so dumb, I don't have any common sense.

Likely this is a result of pathing in the game. You've already clicked on a point, so your characters are moving to that point with the assumption of no traps or environmental effects. When something is spotted along the way, the original path is still set as you've not clicked to create a new path. Clicking to create a new path will result in the revealed trap being taken into account.

Give it a try. Next time you spot a trap, reload if it is convenient so you can't see the trap. Send a character with high perception on a route that would go through the trap. That character should trigger it even after revealing it. Then try it by first revealing the trap and then walking in a path to set it off. I don't think you can in the second instance.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but that is likely why it is happening. I'm not really sure how easy of a fix this would be for the developers.

I don't notice them avoiding traps at all. Today my party walked over a detected pressure plate, one by one single file. And I actually stopped them first, then clicked past the trap to move them. Instead going around it, it was click boom click boom click boom. And there was plenty room to go around it. He may have just said, "Everyone step on this!"

On the way out, they all stepped on it again.

Pressure plates are not avoided. This is because some pressure plates are helpful and you want to be able to stand on them.

It is however physically impossible to force pathing on a detected mine outside of combat. The pathing has to be set before detection... It's something I wish they'd change. It really is a lot easier to just walk mines with my fire immune character than it is to painstakingly go and blow them up so I don't accidentally walk on an undetected one while the party is together.

They wont avoid the traps if the movement command was given before the trap was discovered. If you stop your party and move them again they will avoid the little round shaped traps.

If the game has a button to 'Halt' all characters, then if you hear the alert then tap that quick. This would make it into a player skill test as well as a character one (the perception stat).

I dont have the game in front of me, so I dont know if the option exists. A simple solution either way.

It actually does. If your group is running around somewhere and you hear them mention something about a mine and then you right click, it will cancel the current destination and they'll all just stop. Then you can left click again and pick a new destination and they'll avoid the mine.