Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Never using the Undead until Zombie modded out

This isn't Dungeons and Dragons. Undead are not always evil or powered by evil spirits/negative energy. There have been plenty of examples of neutral and friendly undead. It doesn't HAVE to use this convention. This series didn't use that convention until D:OS 1.

In fact this game doesn't even follow its own conventions. You are a skeleton-type undead, not a zombie-type undead. Skeletons shouldn't have the Zombie talent at all (they didn't in D:OS 1 at least).




The game is specifically intended to be challenging enough to keep an all-living-party up and going. I'm not a fan of needing to balance my team specifically around keeping an Undead member alive. I need to sacrifice ability points and skill slots of living party members to give them poison skills to heal the zombie. That is an unnecessary and obnoxious burden.

Forcing Reverse Healing on an entire race is a terrible, terrible, design decision, and it completely shuts out an entire race from 90% of all possible healing sources. I sure didn't see much in the way of poison spells the last time I played.

If people want to take the shitty Zombie Talent as a challenge, their own CHOICE, that's fine. But forcing the shitty Zombie Talent on an entire race is a crap decision. I tried telling Larian not to do this months ago.

In the alpha there were several fights which ended with automatically generated Blessed surfaces underneath. The only waypoint on the east side of the island is in a blessed pool in the Seekers hideout.




What a completely worthless comment. No duh I'll be picking a different race. I already said I would be. My point is that is that the reason I will be picking different races and never the Undead is because of an Incredibly Poor Design Decision which was completely unnecessary and has a negative impact on gameplay.

Just pair undead with necro.. use necromancy to gain life from doing damage and sustain yourself on that and poison not to mention there is a special artifact that converts healing potions into poison potions for undead and that undead have abilities other races do not (unlimited lockpicking/walking thru the deathfog or whatever)

there is no other way past the deathfog other than being undead... so if you dont have an undead with you things will be locked away from you behind this fog...

but there are plenty of ways for undead to sustain themselves if you use the right skills.

Deathfog is actually a great example of good balancing undead I mean it kills any living being but heals undeads I think that op just wants same values and buffs for all races and just visual differences. Like skeletons look "boney" elves have "pointy" ears, dwarfs have beards and so on.
I dont get it what op wants the undead have solid + for every - they get.
They seem quite solid race to me, only thing that might bother new players is how people would react on udeads but that is up to player to resolve.

Being able to only heal from poison is a valid drawback to the undead race! They do not need lockpicks, they can pretend to be any of the races once they get the mask and are immune to death fog.

If they did not have this drawback of healing only through poison there would be no reason to play as anything BUT undead.

You're correct. The Divinity series *isn't* D&D, but it sure borrows a lot from it in use in the game's design. Games like Final Fantasy did as well, a JRPG that also has a system where holy magic such as curative spells have negative effects on undead; you see this used time and time again not only traditional CRPG's, but also JRPG's. They even emulate these tabletop mechanics it in their very own "GM mode" by allowing for dice, vignettes and traditional P&P storytelling and game-play, so you shouldn't deny the fact that they've taken more than a few ideas and built parts of their game in homage to these systems; it's no sin to borrow from other source material as long as you make it your own, which I feel they have.

What is boils down to is the lore of the game. If the team, and loremasters at Larian Studios believe that undead should be harmed by 'positive energy' or whatever these spells are considered, then that's how it's going to be, since it fits into their lore. Yes, this may make the game a bit more difficult, but in a number of situations, it makes it easier if you look at the perks that undead *do* have. They even give a warning that it'll make the game more challenging before you play an undead character.

Does it suck for people who wanted a more traditional character race that they could play alongside their friends, and benefit from the same boons that the rest of the party has? For sure. Does it make them any less fun? That's subjective. With that said, it by no way limits you from playing with other races in the same party. Yes, it may be difficult in some places, but we play games to be challenged in most cases, don't we? Isn't that what makes them fun?

They can also heal thru necromancy... necromancy and poison can both heal undead so its not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be.. they have a ton in their favor if they didnt have this downside there would be no reason not to play them.

They dont need mask to get immune to death fog, they are immune on it from the start. The game itself is NOT in shape most common RPG`s and that is prolly what confuses most people. Lots of people adapted only one shape of creatures for RPG`s "orcs are stupid and undeads are evil, elfs are good, dwarfs have beard, humans are good or poor with one who is main bad guy"
They just cant accept different shapes of different RPG universes with different rules.

No one said they needed the mask to be immune to death fog... and the undead are more "evil" in this game... they have to make the mask by murdering people for their faces... and the origin character was the one who made this process for making the mask and killed the person who woke him... hardly seems nice to me.

Hi All

As always interesting discussion.

I agree with Adrianna, Undead as presented have an 'evil' vibe. But hey I enjoy playing rogues/ assassins!

From a play balance viewpoint.. many fights include using bless to create healing surfaces.. so this will directly harm your undead character (ignoring magical armour)?
Was there thought to allow magic armour to prevent this? (i.e. with MA you don't heal in poison but don't get damaged by healing surfaces etc).

With regards to bless, I suspect they have something sorted as that would be an obvious thing coming up in a play test. It should be noted they have already stated that not all healing damages the undead. They can heal from both poison and necromancy. I would expect blessed surfaces to simply have no effect at all on the undead (from a balance perspective it would be terrible it if damaged and from a lore perspective it would be inconsistent if it still healed).

But hey, if Larian hasn't thought about this yet then I expect a quick patch as everyone playing the undead dies instantly when they get to the first automatic appearance of the blessed surfaces :p

The undead don't have the "zombie" talent in that all healing damages them, it is just "good" healing that does.

Undead are presented as "evil" in almost every RPG game I played (not to mention games like L4D2) I think that only time when I had "normal" undead was when I played mine undeads in WoW. Plus I do not see em as that evil at all, I think that only one who has tag as villain of origin characters is that human Ifn-Abn-Metz (I prolly typed it wrong)
While Fane was one who made original masks you still make your own mask. Plus only thing that we know of undead story at this moment is "he is (Fane) entombed alive, layed there about 3000 years later in totally different world and world has totally changed for him"
We dunno entire story, but from my opinion I am getting tired of almost every RPGs showing orcs, undeads, trolls and other monsters as bad guys, and showing humans, elves, dwarfs, plumbers and hedgehogs as heroes.
I wanna play as noble paladin undead or as wicked cloaked shadowblade dwarf...... (ok ok dwarfs are sometimes seen as rouges but o well :p )

I don't see why an undead has to be considered innately evil; there's no reason why you can't play a good-natured undead, regardless as to how you were "reborn". That said, depending on how they were brought back, which I'd assume is through necromancy and dark magic, they'd still have a natural aversion to positive magic, depending on how the lore works in this game. You really have to ask yourself how these undead came to be. Are they cursed? Are they raised by necromantic energies? It's obvious that divine and clerical energies harm them, so in some way it must unravel or disperse what holds them together, which I'd assume is simply negative energy of some sort.

Look at White Wolf games, where vampires can choose to drink blood from animals like rats, or even from blood bags, rather than humans in attempt to maintain their morality and humanity, rather than becoming true monsters. These vampires might be looked down upon for these actions by the rest of their kind, but in essence they're still trying to make the best of a poor situation and by proxy I feel are 'good' characters, even if they're technically monsters, and would be regarded as such by everyone else.

I feel that the undead in this game, and many others, have the same problem. Vampires in VtM can still be harmed by sunlight. Just because a vampire tries to live to the best of their ability in attempt to maintain their humanity, doesn't mean that they're not held to the same rules and regulations as the other vampires. This, I feel, is the same thing players have to understand about undead here. That said, it seems like undead in this can still cast curative magic and bless spells, which adds a whole new layer to the puzzle as to just how these characters really work from both a lore and mechanical standpoint.

no.

it like the idea, b/c it makes sense, its lore friendly, it adds a kind of realism if you like, i even find it kinda innovative, it makes gameplay more varied, offers more/additional options etc. etc. etc.

oc, it makes the game more challenging, but:
good ideas, that offer value added, more varied gameplay >>> more challanging game mechanics ALWAYS

if you dont like a challange, play on easy mode.

I'm just going to have to see how the undead work out at release. It sort of sounds like people who play undead, are going to have to work harder to be viable. As for the whole "evil" vibe thing, that really depends on the type of undead they are. In Divinity's lore, I believe there are three kinds of dead. The mindless zombie kind, the bound kind, and then there are the "chosen". As far as I understand it, the chosen are their own civilization, and are just as capable of reasoning as the living, and are also able to breed; they are an actual UNDEAD race. In fact, I think we meet a chosen in EA. The bound are whatever, they are normally evil, because they are bound by necromatic magic to be slaves, for good or for ill. The mindless zombies are not good or evil, because they are just mindless monsters. I imagine the chosen will have both good and bad. So, i don't agree that undead have a "evil" vibe in Divinity.

Indeed, what a completely worthless comment (Stabbey's that is).

I would call skinning peoples faces off to steal their identities and devouring the life essence of people as evil actions... but i guess you somehow see that as good or something...

It's evil, no question. But isn't it also kind of evil to steal source from people, dead or not? Most undeads I faced were evil, because they tried to kill me, and that's enough to make them evil for me. Lord Withermore however, whom I consider undead, was a nice guy.

To the healing problem: I think it's an interesting variation. I do not believe that it will make the game unplayable with an undead in the party, perhaps only more difficult. And different. And that's what different races are for in my opinion.

There is a bigger problem: undeads are ugly. Buuuh. So like dwarfs and lizards they are out of my party. Which is a pity, the gameplay sounds interesting with them.

Every society has their view of what evil is and considering that undeads in game are considered as different society then it is normal that they will have different views on world around them. Not to mention that they are not seen well from rest of the society, on the stream when Swen revealed that he is undead to the first character (undead started in totally bandaged like coat-hood.. ) the guy attacked him, first character he meets in game. And also when he was starting game with undead there popped warning like window that said "are you sure wanna play with undead if this is first time playing we advise to play with some other char" (something like that)
But in general we all are just guessing on lore and how undead are played. Larian said that there would not be patches until release, so no undeads before release ) but in general we can play undead how we want, we can play them as noble paladins or dark knights or as evil assassins or shadowblades (I go for shadowblades )

Hey guys dont take it so seriously, just keep a throwing knife rogue in party and everything will be fine :D

Joking apart, making the perma-zombie talent on undead class it's a tough decision, i understand the doubts, but we dont know enough to judge it yet. Maybe it will too unbalanced, and in this case i have no doubt that something will come up to fix it, but i think they're testing the game and figuring out what works and what does not.
My main concern is enemy's healing, it's virtually too easy to overkill an undead character with healing spam, but it's possible that the mask will prevent this behaviour, tricking enemies into thinking you are a living creature.
It's too soon to judge, we'll see.

I understand your point, but to their civilization, it might not be "evil". One could say the lizards are evil, because they view anybody who isn't a lizard as a lesser being, and as one who should either be a slave or a servant of some kind.