Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Creating a ideal party, abilities help etc

This is actually really important. RAIN STACKS WITH ITSELF.

You can cast rain again on the same spot, and it will widen the puddle on the ground. I am not talking about the stat benefits stacking with itself, but creating a larger and larger elemental effect. Even if you cast Rain on the exact same spot, it will keep getting wider and wider.

I have filled entire screens before with electrocuted rain. Right now I am running two characters who have Rain at 1 Cooldown. You can never have enough rain. Just remember that electrocuting the water reduces the amount of rain, so you need to generate more rain than you are destroying. It's not a bad idea to give EVERY character Hydro 1, just for Rain and maybe Water of Life. Rain is just that good.

I feel sneak is utterly useless. Mind you, my friend and I play a dex rogue and a mage generalist, but he never uses the sneak attack. Everything dies so incredibly fast in this game, so there's really no need for it. You will need it of course, if you want to min-max!

Actually, now that I think about it, my mage sneaks more than him, because I like to initiate the combat with a ninja-skeleton.

Perhaps. But not at full strength; Wet does not stack with itself. One of the main things I use Rain for is the combo with Bitter Chill (or whatever the Aerotheurge spell is called).

thank you all for the answers

who should I take the leadership and blacksmithing with btw? (party of 1 mage, 1 melee rogue, jahan and cain (madera))

also combination of 2 mages (heavy pyro/2 orso geo/2 hydro/2 witchraft) + Jahan (heavy hydro/heavy air/1-2 pyro/2 witchraft) or something like that?

Reading comprehension fail

Since Jahan starts with Scientist, you might as well have him take blacksmithing. Note that you never need to put more than 2 points into blacksmithing or crafting with Jahan. You can find or buy bracers and belts that give +crafting/blacksmith fairly easily; this together with Scientist means you have an easy +3 bonus to both on Jahan.

As for leadership, it depends. The bonuses on leadership are: +initiative, +damage, +chance to hit (level 3+), +crit chance (level 4+), +willpower (level 5+), +immune to fear (level 5+), +bodybuilding (level 6+). I think the bonuses are more powerful on warriors/rogues/rangers than on mages, so it may make more sense to take leadership on one of your mages since the person with the leadership ability doesn't apply the bonuses to himself.

Another thing to consider is that leadership gives +5 initiative, which turns into a whopping +10 at level 4+. It is really hard to match that bonus without pumping lots of points into perception/speed. This means that whoever has the leadership ability probably will be taking their combat turns after all your other party members.

Finally, you can find the +leadership stat on helms (in my experience more common on str-based helms than dex-based helms, but don't take this as gospel) and weapons. Just something to think about if you like to min-max.

I have found that creating my party to compliment the NPC's currently available has been very helpful on hard difficulty, And Hybrid seems to gimp you later on due to their being only 15 ability points available that I know of from 1-20. I had a nightblade I made it to level 10 with, then suddenly she started dying constantly. Second play through with a pure ranger and a pure mage have shown me the power difference, lesson learned.

Ranger + Mage is definitely one of the best combos in the game.

You definitely want each character to specialize in one ability point type (though getting some Speed too is helpful once you have enough INT, DEX or STR).

I have a dual Lone Wolf party with a cast-everything glass cannon spellcaster and a melee fighter/crafter.

A lot of fights, the melee fighter doesn't do much -- the caster turns the field into a smoking ruin and rains down fire, poison and boulders on enemies who can't see us to do anything about it.

Other times, the caster stuns/freezes/blinds enemies and the melee fighter takes them apart. Still, on average I kind of think a ranger with geomancy would have been a better second character.

Pls don't even use ranger or witchcraft as a main char. It's so goddamn boring.

Ironically, I've got ranger with witchcraft on one of my mains.

In my opinion
-A pure mage, who can cast any element
-A sword-and-board warrior
-A Pure Ranger
-One whatever you want.

For maximum OP, every character should have Leech and Glass Cannon.
Everyone should also put a single point in Witchcraft, and learn Bloodletting, which (with Leech) is a full heal spell.
After getting Glass Cannon, Constitution becomes more important than Speed.

Give your Mage leadership.
Make one character a Blacksmith / Crafter (I recommend Ranger)
Make one character a Barter / Charisma (I recommend Warrior)

Leech + Bloodletting is not usually a full heal on my caster, for whatever reason. But Leech is still free healing, and mitigating a lot of incoming damage.

Zombie makes poison-based enemies cake, as long as they don't also ignite all that ooze you're standing in. It makes instant healing considerably more difficult though.

I've found the best defense is battlefield control and disabling enemies.

Some things I've noticed this playthrough...

1. I still stand by my advice earlier than Pyrotechnic and Geomancy should be split between two different casters, and Aerotheurge and Hydrosophist should also be split. I also think it's key to combine Pyrotechnic with Man-At-Arms, so you can utilize Explode by using plate armour and Weather the Storm to acquire fire immunity (or at least decent resistance). The part I got wrong was that Pyrotechnic should be combined with Aerotheurge. Hydrosophist is just too useful, so you want a "fire and ice" armoured caster as one of your mains, with Jahan specializing in aero, geo, and witchcraft.

2. The puddle created by Rain is not random. Whenever you cast Rain, the puddle will always appear in the very center of the area of the spell as a whole. You can get the puddle to always appear immediately under your character by simply casting Rain directly on top of your character; alternatively, you can use this to very easily set up shocked puddles on specific targets.

Despite the minor imperfection on #1, I'm actually going to finish the game this time. I've been a compulsive reroller so far, and I'm drawing a line in the sand against myself.