Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Fleeing seems overpowered *spoilers within*

I just finished my one-man playthrough with a warrior. I made a couple mistakes with my build, and I also bugged out a couple quests, which was especially important on the last fight since they apparently would've given me two support people if I hadn't said I'd be back later, so I really had to do the last fight solo. I still won that fight, though, which leads me to my point:

Fleeing is overpowered.

The way I did the last fight was, I'd sneak in, kill one guy, and then flee. I did this for everyone in the final fight except for Bishop Alexander and the void worm. This way I managed to fight both Bishop Alexander and the void worm one-on-one (the void worm didn't come out until Alex was dead for some reason). I'm pretty sure I could not have done that fight another way. There was another fight in the swamp that I did a similar way, near the statue you get Bless at (hardest fight to solo outside of the final fight).

There doesn't seem to be any sort of penalty or risk factor involved in fleeing. So, as I did in those two fights, you can just use it over and over again until you kill everyone. As such, what would've been an impossible fight becomes relatively easy (Bishop Alexander was easy without support units, as I could just keep him stunlocked until he died; the void worm actually ended up being a harder fight due to this tactic, as it normally would fight your enemies as well as you).

I don't know what the right solution would be, here, honestly. Maybe implement a chance to fail to flee. Maybe have a minimum distance between your character and the nearest enemy, so as to restrict your ability to flee (Bishop Alexander was close enough to hit me with an attack of opportunity one of the times I fled). Give it an AP cost. Something.

I agree with this. It's very important to control movement, but there are few tools for achieving this. It's something that should be the specialty of the warrior classes. Perhaps, as an example, they could get a special attack (eg a war cry) that prevents a distant enemy from moving.

Right now, the only penalty for fleeing seems to be possibly taking an Attack of Opportunity. Now if you want to flee, you're likely injured and that MIGHT kill you... So for that small condition set, Escapist might seem worthwhile.

However, there are two other, better Talents you could take instead: Duck Duck Goose, which prevents you from triggering AoO, and Comeback Kid, which will revive you if you die from an AoO.

Hence, Escapist is pretty much useless. Just remove Duck Duck Goose and add in the prevent-triggering-AoO to Escapist on top of "flee battle anytime".

You know, I never really paid attention to the Escapist talent, so it didn't even cross my mind. I think fleeing might be actually broken right now, then, because I didn't take that talent, and I was still able to flee when right next to an enemy. Escapist's description suggest that shouldn't have been possible.

Maybe it's a good idea that you can only flee (teleport) if you invest in the Escapist talent?

I think you need a chance to die while fleeing or a chance to be captured whilst feeling and that char (only) ends up in a prison and the rest of the group needs to go and rescue them.

For the sake of trying to make the Escapist talent worthwhile to take so do i agree that flee may need a change.

But beside that, in my opinion it is your choice to flee or not and therefore not really a problem, for me it is similar in how you can take one man army to try make things more challanging for you or explorer mode to make things more easy, or the choice trying to play a mid maxed party or a more challanging approach where you dont play with a classic healer in the party.

If you choose to flee from combat to make the battle more easy then that is ok, but that is your own choice, and i dont see the harm to have that choice avaible.

And what happens the second time someone needs to be rescued from prison?

Why not just make it so PCs can only flee when they are out of Line-Of-Sight of all the enemies in the encounter? It would prevent the cheesy "just out of arm's reach" fleeing and allow some creative use of smoke screens, blind, stealth, and invisibility when needed. If an enemy is petrified, frozen, stunned, or blinded, they should also not inhibit a character from fleeing. (If you can hard CC all enemies within threatening range, you've probably already won that battle anyway).

Additionally, you should not be able to flee while within a hazardous surface (like oil, fire, poison clouds, ice, etc). Other conditions such as Crippled or Blinded could prevent fleeing, too.

This is a good idea. At least, probably better than my idea of just removing the button.

This would be good. It would give the Escapist talent some purpose, as well.

Well that's actually very immersive. In real life the guys that can punch hard and run fast are pretty OP too.

Overpowered? No. That just means that stealth is a real and workable tactic.....as it should have been in DOS1, though it didn't quite turn out that way then.....very glad they fixed it.

*That guy* on every game ever: "omgz something is effective IT'S OVERPOWERED! NERF PL0X"

Please don't be *that guy*

Petition for 3 AP Warlord, let's go!

Well, sure, if that's what was happening. I don't think that you can punch someone hard and then instantly teleport away in real life, though, which is what's happening in the game.


Stealth is not relevant here, though. You don't need to use stealth, just hit the Flee button. There is no stealth involved. Your enemies know you're there. They're actively fighting with you. Then, you just magically disappear. If you had to use invisibility first, or some kind of stealth skill, that'd be fine, but you don't. You can run up to someone, smack them in the face, yell at them for a bit, and then you're just gone, like nothing happened.

The nearest comparison I can think of to another game where you can do this is in World of Warcraft where, as a paladin, you could throw up Divine Shield and then use your hearthstone to teleport out while invincible. I haven't played WoW in a while, so I don't know if that still works, but it used to.

^This right here...this is the truth.

Some people are literally out to just ruin every feature in a game that could possibly be fun. Don't like it? Then don't use it....what others do in their game doesn't affect you.

Definitely agree that someone shouldnt be able to just flee all the time without penalty. Having the AI be alerted and prepared for you next time would be nice. Even having troop movements switched around as if they're looking for you. Or having the enemy increasing in number if you're gone too long as they realize they need more bodies to take you. There could also be environment changes like traps added or terrain addition like fortifications in favor of the enemy.....

No one would just keep standing around like nothing happened :P

The problem with this is that it could be applied to everything:

Sneaking means the AI never reacts to you in combat? Dont use it in combat

Two handed makes killing every one super easy? Don't use two handed

CCing means the AI never has a chance to have a turn cause this spell goes through armor and is basically unblockable? Don't use it

What? All of the above makes certain talents useless or redundant for you? Don't use them or ignore the talents

.....Game balance should never be solved with: "Don't use it"



Something bad I imagine......so don't get caught? Or take the flee talent?

This is really not a realistic issue... I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the majority of casual players never fled a battle once and opted to reload instead. (as was the case for me and I don't even consider myself a casual player) If you don't like the abuse-able nature of the current flee system then the solution is to not abuse it.

Spending time addressing this issue would be wasteful since it effects only a small portion of the community in a not very meaningful way. In the meantime there are other issues that really need to be addressed like UI improvements, (Anyone want keybinds for linking and unlinking the whole party? I sure do.) graphical bugs, (like hair vanishing all the time) bugs in general, (like the black cat vanishing on load after a certain point???) carefully crafting the rest of the world to meet expectations... hell, this game is by no means supposed to be balanced and I'd still put it way above flee abuse in terms of priority.