Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Scales - Gameplay Rebalance Mod for EE

Edit: Big update 11/19/15: telekinesis skills!

Hello, D:OSites: if you're looking for a way to rebalance and reinvigorate your next playthrough, or even your current one, consider downloading the beta of Scales, my gameplay overhaul mod.

-New skills for Telekinesis like Wind Walker, where you automatically dodge out of the way of melee attacks, or Weapon Throw, to deal damage in a cone attack. Deal physical damage while improving your movement and physical control (more skills to come for all ability trees).

-Rebalance of loot and economy: lucky charm loot tables greatly improved; fewer white armor and weapons and they're worth a lot less so you won't be drowning in gold; new and improved modifiers for loot, while telekinesis and lucky charm bonuses don't appear anymore, and more; all bosses drop epic+ items so killing them is satisfying; Divine items can now rarely have two legendary bonuses (e.g., grant you two skills).

-Several skills and items rebalanced: bitter chill now chills instead of freezes; special arrows cost 5 AP instead of 4, grenades rebalanced, less penalty for low attributes to encourage hybrid classes, etc.

-Tactician NPCs have +1 bodybuilding and willpower, and more movement speed. Wolgraff has more appropriate starting stats and talents! Summons have stench so enemies will be less likely to target them. Source Difficulty Enhanced, anyone?

-Convenience factors like an infinite healing potion that costs 25 AP but heals you to full, so healing up outside of combat is less of a hassle; Kidling's movement speed mod and Vrakyas's font mod integrated.

See the Nexus page for more details. Note that as a beta, everything is still in flux, there's almost certainly bugs (but probably nothing gamebreaking or catkilling), and there's a lot of changes ahead, especially once the editor is released. Feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Ultimately, some people will always be able beat the game with their hands tied behind their back with how inept the AI can be (something I REALLY would like to address with the editor, as difficult as it will be), but hopefully some of you will gain a bit more challenge and entertainment from what purports to be a more balanced game.

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin/mods/68?

The proper link is http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin/mods/68/?

And make sure that is okay with the area in Hiberheim where you teleport from cliff to cliff to access behind the castle.

Ha, woops, thanks for noticing that. I'll see if the teleport change works with Hiberheim. There must be other abilities that work for that spot, no?

Bitter cold is a ridiculous spell at the moment. 2AP disable with great range, compared to freezing touch which basically is the same spell with 3AP and 3 meters range.

The biggest problem with the game is level 4-9, the rest is a piece of cake (just like vanilla). Dealing with skeletons/boars/zombies without a proper pyro mage is a nightmare. Rangers with fire/explosive arrows could do the trick if there was a recipe to craft these valuable arrows...Maybe oil barrel+arrowhead? Like poison arrows.

Rogues are useless early game, not enough APs and movement to position and deal damage. With some speed and dual wielding 5 they become real killing machines though. Blacksmithing 5 allows for dual +2 speed daggers, and great damage compared to what you might loot. That's a shame really, most weapons are useless unless you craft and improve them.
Winged feet should be at least adept tier, this spell is totally gamebreaking. It could even deserve master tier...

If you could do something to reduce heal cooldowns to 1 turn outside combat I'd be very happy too. Healing outside of combat is just tedious. Or you could improve food : give long-lasting healing effects.

To fix sneaking (and by proxy Guerilla) make the AP cost scale with sneaking level, maybe 3ap at level 4 and 5, 2ap at level 6.

Nerfed Bitter Cold to chill only. Still good if you set up with it with rain or whatnot, but it's a lot more situational.

I don't think the undead are particularly hard without a pyro, though it does make it easier. Looking into adding bludgeoning weapons you can backstab with (already made branches/nail-studded branches backstab) to make rogues more useful in the beginning. Dunno if Winged Feet is gamebreaking, but it's definitely strong. Probably could be an adept spell, but again, the beginning is really when the rogue needs all the help he can get. But I think it's too easy to throw a point into scoundrel and you basically don't have to worry about surfaces again.

How about making winged feet adept and cloak and dagger novice? Though Cloak and dagger is pretty good too. What about precise incision as novice?

Considering giving rogues the "Wind Walker" skill, a really awesome skill that Dietmar uses: whenever you're hit by a melee attack, you're teleported away. Not entirely sure how it works, whether it will teleport you into fire or what have you, but I think it's a freaking sweet concept regardless. Probably an adept spell though.

Not entirely sure how to help rogues out in the beginning without overpowering them later. (Taking away winged feet from beginning rogues ain't exactly helping, but precise incision might give them some extra damage early on).

Also want to make healing outside of combat less tedious. Maybe food could heal a little bit for 15 turns or something, so everyone could just munch on something, loot stuff, run around for a bit to the next battle, and they'll be good to go, but it wouldn't be too strong of a heal in combat. But also don't want to make food even more useless as a combat item than it already is (though I've yet to try Five Star Diner, not sure if they made it much better.)



So far can't change AP cost of sneak, but I'm looking. Once the editor comes out and I can script, I'll make Guerilla affect invisibility too, though I want to make sneaking more useful too.

Edit: Found another way to make rogues more useful: You can put requirements on items for abilities now. So I could make items that require pickpocket or lockpick, and have those items grant you skills. And I'll take away bonuses to pickpocket and lockpick on items. A little contrived, but it'll do for now with just the stat files.

Any suggestions for pickpocket or lockpick abilities? I'd like to make lockpick abilities more like traps, and pickpocket abilities close-range debuffs (but I'd like interesting stuff, not just -20% elemental resist boringness.) I'd like to play with on death effects, like rogue turns invisible on enemy's death, but not sure if I can do that.

Probably will make gloves that require pickpocket 5 but give you crawling infestation. That seem like a fair reward for investing 15 points into pickpocket. But I also want unique skills.

So I've figured out I can start making actual skillbooks that require points in non-combat abilities. I've started with telekinesis because ideas are easier to come up with than pickpocket/lockpick stuff for now. You can buy the skillbooks at an air vendor like Cylia the Enchantress. What do people think of these skills? Keep in mind that telekinesis bonuses will no longer appear on items, so you'll have to invest 15 points to get all the abilities.

In general, how strong do people think telekinesis is without additional skills? I've heard its abusable for making walls of items to block enemies and dragging out tons of barrels into a fight, but do people think that's true? I think I could tone down the distance you can throw stuff with telekinesis if it's strong enough even without the skills, though it should obviously still be useful for throwing stuff around. Is the ability mostly OP because you can so easily get a lot of bonuses off of items, and requiring investment would make it a lot worse?

Here are the skills. I'm sort of framing it as a "physical" magic tree that will be especially useful to melee characters, though it will be useful to everyone (and will also synergize with air magic in a way). Not entirely sure about the order of the skills you should gain.

Telekinesis 1: Throw Weapon - damage characters or items in a small cone in front of you. (Note that the visual cone won't correspond to the actual area of effect. Haven't been able to fix that, unfortunately. Aim it by looking at the circles that appear on character or items.) 4 AP, 4 turn cooldown.

Telekinesis 2: Feather Fall - teleport an object or character 10m without harming them. 5 AP, 5 turn cooldown.

Telekinesis 3: Telekinetic Rush - throw yourself forward for a battering ram-like effect. More damage than battering ram but no knockdown. 5 AP, 5 turn cooldown.

Telekinesis 4: Effortless Push – For zero AP, move an object a huge distance. 3 turn cooldown.

Telekinesis 5: Wind Walker – Telekinetically dodge out of the way whenever an enemy strikes you with a melee attack (same ability as Dietmar, the guy with the Staff of Pergamon). 4 AP, 2 turn duration, 5 turn cooldown.

Chance to find legendary boots that grant Nether Swap, requirement of 5 telekinesis. Also can find legendary gloves that grant air magic teleport, telekinesis requirement 3. Not sure if that's pushing it over the edge, though I do like the idea of a synergy with air magic.

Nice ideas for Telekinesis. I will note that only 5 skills total makes it harder to justify needing to spend 15 points compared to the full schools with 15-17 skills, but that's something that can be fixed over time.

True, though telekinesis also has the non-skill benefit of moving objects, which is supposedly fairly powerful. And it's 5 abilities + 2 loot skill modifiers for abilities, though you'll have to be an air mage to really take full advantage of those loot modifiers (Nether Swap on loot would cost like 20 AP or something if you had no aerothurge).

Does the order of the abilities look good to you? Not sure if the rush is more useful than feather drop, or how useful effortless push will be by the time you have 4 telekinesis. And still not sure exactly how Wind Walker works, but it sure is a damn cool ability.

Any suggestions for more abilities? Probably will just start with these 5 so I can move on to other abilities that need help, but I'll keep good ideas in mind.

I've never really used Telekinesis myself, but while the first three look like dropping in 6 points might be tempting, those upper two skills don't look THAT powerful to be worth 9 precious points even with the chance to get Netherswap boots - ESPECIALLY if it costs 20 AP (although I don't think it's really that high). For that AP cost you might as well roll an air mage.

Remember that if you're removing the skill bonuses from items, they are now competing with other skills which don't get bonuses.

***

It's really hard to decide how useful Effortless will be. Are there enough barrels around in existing fights that you can make great use out of it, or would that only be good if you have a character who carries around barrels and drops them for the telekinetic to use? I have no way to know.

I'll try and think of suggestions for things. I think I thought of a bunch somewhere, I'll have to go track them down.


Charisma 3+ - Skill "Trader's Tongue" - boosts your disposition with an NPC by 50 points for 3 turns. Cooldown - 5 turns. AP cost: whatever.

Note that even if you add in new skills, that does not mean that the ability bonuses must be removed from items. The existence of a skill or two associated does not automatically make those abilities worth full investment.


Leadership 2 - "Martyr" - Remove all negative status effects from an ally and apply them to yourself (remaining duration is passed along as well).

Leadership 4/5 - "Empower" - Share all positive status effects on yourself with all allies within 10 meters (remaining duration is passed along as well).

Blacksmithing 3 - "Armor Break" - Lowers the armor of a targeted enemy by 33% for 4 turns. Cooldown 7 turns.

Locksmithing 3 - "Disable Trap" - Lets you use your lockpicking skill to disable traps without consuming a trap disarm kit.

Sure, if I only add a skill or two, then the ability bonuses will stay. But if there's, say, five+ skills, I don't want people to be able to obtain half of them with gear alone and only be able to put in 3-6 points to get really powerful abilities.

For Telekinesis, I'm thinking of moving Wind Walker down to level 4, and then adding two more abilities for 5, though I'm having a hard time coming up with awesome abilities. Or rather I can (mass teleport for example, or a sort of Rubberband Teleport where you can teleport next to any ally or enemy for a low AP cost, low cooldown), but implementing them is another story.

I like all those ideas a lot, but also difficult to implement. I really don't understand where they define what the stuff in the skilldata actually means, otherwise I'd have more freedom. I think for the lockpicking one I'll just have to make a trap disable kit that requires lockpicking 3 and isn't consumed on use. Might do the same for an indestructible lockpick that requires lockpicking 4 or something. I really want to do stuff with traps for lockpicking, but another thing that will require some custom scripting. Maybe some kind of low AP ability that lets you set a status effect of any element type on an item, so you could explode barrels exactly as you want (like an electricity trap on a water barrel, though not sure if items can accept status effects.)

And it's updated! Added telekinesis skills, lots more loot and economy changes, Source Difficulty-esque enhancement (bodybuilding/willpower and movement speed increase on Tactician NPCs, summons have stench), a convenient health potion to heal yourself after combat, and more skill rebalancing.

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin/mods/68?

Looks cool,

about the telekninesis items (with the requirement), do they take the loot slot of other gear or not? If they are added, there's more loot overall but it's telekinesis-specific loot. Otherwise, there's less vanilla loot (at some point, loot can spread too thin and you never like the bonuses, especially since armor is a huge reason to change gear on armor slots, no matter the other bonuses).

Read your new changes, I have my own mod but yours are starting to look appealing, let someone else do the work.

Do you notice Initiative issues where our guys are always first? Or have you addressed it? Perhaps I missed the details.

But nice additions from your last version, lots of like minded stuff and then some clever things in addition to, esp. the added skills.

It is a concern of mind, though not entirely sure what you mean about the gear taking the "loot slot." There won't be more loot overall (well, with all bosses dropping epic+, kind of, but the telekinesis change itself won't add more gear), but yes, a percentage of that gear will be telekinesis only. With only two telekinesis modifiers, and only legendary boosts at that, they should be pretty rare, but hopefully you might see maybe 2 +teleport gloves and 1 or 2 nether swap boots throughout the game, so you do get a chance to upgrade to armor or slightly different other stats. Definitely want people to comment if they seem to appear excessively (especially on dual legendary boost items). I could make them unique items, ideally placed in a location that only someone with telekinesis would be able to access, but that will have a similar problem of them either showing up too late in the game to be enjoyed enough, or too early and having obsolete armor levels later on.

Of course, with how generous traders are with epic+ items, telekinesis boosts could be surprisingly common. Maybe with the improved economy, you won't be able to buy every single item you want, but you'll have to be a bit more selective (probably haven't improved the economy THAT much, though.)



Hehe, yeah I'm going all out trying to be the definitive gameplay mod You can always lend me your changes and suggestions and I'll credit you

I haven't addressed initiative yet. May just tack on a universal +3-5 bonus to iniative on Tactician NPCs, but not exactly sure what number to pick, or what effect that will have on certain fights. Maybe will nerf leadership initiative bonus to +3 for level 1-3, +6, for level 4-6 (and probably buff some of its other stats to compensate.) May buff leadership a lot actually and take away ability bonuses on items. You have ideas for how to deal with initiative? I do think you should have to invest in speed, perception, and +initiative gear to consistently go first, instead of throwing a couple points in leadership and calling it day, but at the same time, not going before at least most of the enemies can get you wrecked.

Also, what do you think about putting loremaster requirements on at least some scrolls? I'm thinking of adding new resurrect scrolls that heal for more and have a lower AP cost.

I also need some help thinking of ways to make magic/rare loot more interesting, especially when getting rid of ability bonuses. There's already a limited pool of non-legendary bonuses, so not sure what to do with that.

Thanks!

The only thing I've done that you haven't generally (you've done more overall), is I took item weight and divided by 10 basically to make items lighter. Playing with a gamepad I wanted to reduce additional inventory management to not worry about weight issues.

Another thing, you reduced gold to, but also I dropped the cost of Potions. Since they are one-time use, I was trying to find a price where I think the cost owas worth the one time use. The prices prior were too much that is was a no-brainer not to buy for me.

Right now early game, I set Init -8 to have a mix on who goes first, that is a crazy amount imo, but that is what it took. Not saying this is the best, but was the quickest for me. I'll go back and review what I all have, I know my low levels are 6-8-8-8 init each, so that tells me the baddies early on are around zero.

I'm for anything that limits all the special arrows, scrolls and grenades. It's a cornucopia of too much of a good thing that makes the game lose some tactics. I did bump up AP for arrows, scrolls and grenades. I'm sure I done something with wands, I'd have to relook.

Think about arrows in what could really happen. I was thinking Poison, Water, Fire, Smoke arrows and get rid of the rest. So that having a bow doesn't mean you're a mage. Scrolls with some more requirements are probably a good thing to.

I think we are on the same page, there is a lot you can tweak to make this more of a tactical game, feel more specialized between chars.

Weight isn't too much of a concern for me. I'd rather reduce the number of items you find, and then make certain items (mainly barrels) really heavy so carrying them around is hard unless you get pack mule on a high strength character or something. Do you think barrels are a little too powerful overall, or is that just my own impression? Even if I'm setting up telekinesis so you can use barrels even more than already.

Maybe I can just give Tactician NPCs +8 initiative instead of players -8 initiative? I might make it +5 universal and then reduce leadership bonuses to 3/6 from 5/10, and then tweak numbers if I still feel like players going first is automatic.

The way I see it, players already get to go first most of the time anyway since they usually get to initiate combat. Not always, but quite often (and you can pretty much just initiate a scripted fight and flee to start it on your terms.)

Will consider cheapening potions. I think I already did it for arrows, actually. As far as the economy goes, my number one goal is to make epic+ items actually expensive so even if they're an endless source of items, you won't be able to get literally every one you want. Regarding rangers as mages, I'd rather avoid taking away options (several arrows) from a class if I can. It would be neat to replace certain arrows with more uniquely ranger stuff, but not sure what to do for that.

Also, what are your thoughts on making "crafting mules?" I think it's kind of cheesy, but it also makes sense in its own way that someone might stay home to make gear for everyone else. I'm also kind of concerned about people who will use "rogue mules" to lockpick all the unbreakable locked chests I plan on adding (with editor) with lots of goodies in them. It just makes it a lot harder to balance and encourage people to invest in non-combat abilities when they can just make a character they never use do it. I'm kind of trying to deal with that by giving all abilities combat value, but it's hard for stuff like crafting. I don't want to impinge on people's freedom too much, but I wonder if there's a way I could make muling characters impossible, at least for a hardcore version of my mod.

I don't use barrels as offensive objects, it's an inv management issue for me with a gamepad more than anything.

You most likely have further along saves to test initiative. Try it out at various spots and imo unless you focused heavy in init, I think it should be a 50-50 order thing. That alone is a pretty large difficulty swing. EDIT: Testing more perhaps -5, or take out of Leadership.

I just have one character of the 4 build up craft/blacksmith (Jahan), haven't done mules. That is a true min/max option you mention. If the game were a lot harder then perhaps I could see doing something like that.

I'm going to play out mine a little more, but I'm pretty certain I'm going to give what you have been working on a spin to, imo a lot of good things in yours.

So here are my current changes for the next version (probably more to add, but I'm moving more into terroritory I'm a bit less familiar with.) I'm curious what people think about these changes. For leadership, I want to get away from it being obviously superior to put it on a mage since mages benefit so little from vanilla leadership, though it still increases your hit and crit chance. Not sure I should take those away entirely and replace them with something that is universally beneficial no matter your class.

I'm also curious about master skills. What skills do people think are really OP, and which ones are not quite as good? I've heard that master skills just decimate all semblance of balance; is that true? By about how much % should I reduce the damage of master skills in general? I've probably reduced their damage by 20-30%, if my changes have as much as an effect as I think they will. Obviously they should still be powerful, but not gamebreaking.

Changelog 1.2

Improved leadership bonuses (except I nerfed the iniative bonus from 5/10 to 3/6/7 and made it provide a primary stat bonus (int/str/dex) at leadership 3+, and a speed bonus at 5+. Made Obedient trait give +1 Willpower and +5% elemental resist when in sight of a leader. It's a small bonus, but it should be just enough where Independent isn't obviously superior to Obedient.



Removed leadership bonuses on loot (though you can still get an extra point with Righteous).

Increased value of rare, epic, legendary, and divine items by 50+%. Hopefully this means good items will be expensive, and while you'll make more money from selling rare+ items, it should be made up by items that you actually want being more expensive.

Nerfed damage of Earthquake, Flurry, Chain Lightning, Infectious Flame, Deadly Spores, Death Punch.

Nerfed soulsap to -3 Bodybuilding/Willpower (from -5), -35% damage resistance (from -50). Reduced AP cost from 8 to 6.

Buffed Immolate to 250% to apply burning (from 100%). Buffed Winterblast freeze chance to 150 (from 100). Buffed Horrific Scream's fear chance to 125% (from 100%).

Reduced Farsight chance to hit bonus from 50% to 35%, but slightly improved the sight bonus from 10 to 12 (dunno exactly what this does, to be honest).

Nerfed Oath of Desecration damage bonus from 40% to 35%.

Farsight hit boost nerfed from 50% to 35%

Survivor's Karma now boosts hit chance by 15%, increased crit chance bonus to 10% (from 5).

Tactician NPCs now have +3 initiative. (They may need more, but I just decided to lowball it, especially since I nerfed leadership's initiative bonus.)