Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Should armor work like the spell "deathwish"?

So, the current armor system has been heavily criticized on these forums. Many of these complaints have been in regards to how much it incentivizes partyconfigurations that focus on either physical or magical (especially physical, since physical resistance is quite rare) or how it makes combat a bit dull since CC is always an expected binary "yes" or "no" (excluding the lucky crits that might change the outcome).

In the game, there is a necro spell called deathwish that gives a damage boost in reverse proportion to how much HP you have lost - if you have 75% hp, it's a 25% damage boost, and at 25% hp it's a 75% damage boost etc.

Perhaps a similar approach could be used for the armor system. Bring someone down to 75% armor, there's a 25% chance of your CC to apply. If this causes CC to be too strong, balance it accordingly.

+ Makes combat less predetermined
+ Makes hybrid builds more viable
+ Makes teams that divide their damage source more viable
+ Doesn't completely void to appeal to stack armor - still more difficult to bring a 6k armor enemy to 50% then a 3k one.

- Less intuitive, would need explaining and tooltips
- Requires CC rebalancing (probably)
- Others?

They changed the system to remove the influence of rng and you put it right back in, lol.

The armor system is fine, there are plenty of magic skills that deals physical damage, geo acid, necro, and restoration on undead/decay, and there are finesse based magic armor destroying skills in scoundrel, str based magic armor destroying skills in poly. Always target the lower defense.

No matter how much people criticize the new armor system it's still better than the one in the first game, and I haven't seen any actual good suggestion to change it yet anyway.

That idea has been suggested before, many times, by people who seem to have forgotten why the armor system was added to the game at all.

If you want to see what a system like this would look like, there is a mod that does exactly what you ask called "Armor-based saving throws".
Personally I agree with the last two posts in that RNG like this is not the way to go.

In DOS:1 when you fought a boss, or any enemy for that matter, every bit of CC you got off (assuming you didn't save scum) was rewarding but once it wore off you had to find a way to do it again. The first disable you get off on someone doesn't mean the next one will be easier.
In DOS:2, once you get the armor off a boss or any enemy, they become extremely easy to disable again and might as well be dead. The problem as I see it with combat is that after the first turn or two, when all the enemies have had their armor removed, you are really just playing clean up.
I'm experimenting with a change via modding so armor is heavily reduced heavily (50-75%) and restores (50-100%) every turn, so every turn is effectively a fresh slate.
Also attempting to make some damage (50% is my test value) of all damage you deal go straight through to vitality so when the armor is restored you are still capable of dealing damage to the target, and thus overarmored targets don't become effectively invulnerable.

It's not the same, though.

Having a fixed 45% chance to avoid getting knocked down due to bodybuilding, is not the same as having a gradient, that is atleast partially under your control. The game has many armor restoring spells to use at your disposal to minimize the chances of getting CC'ed, if such a system is in place.

Also, may I suggest that you elaborate on your points instead of coming off as passive-aggressive? It makes it a lot easier to have a meaningful discussion - and if that is not your goal, why bother posting at all?

Awesome, I'll look into that. Have you tried it, and if so, what where your experiences with the mod?

I disagree. It is effectively the same because it's still a dice roll. An enemy has 45% PA left and you use Knockdown (assuming you won't do enough damage to clear the armor). Can you say, with certainty whether the skill will land or not? The answer is no.

There is no effective difference between a skill with a 45% chance to land a status in a system with no status-blocking armor, and a skill with 100% chance to hit in a system where an enemy with 55% armor left has a 45% chance of being hit with the status. Either way, it comes down to a virtual dice roll.

It's fantastic. Really improves the game.

I suggested a more complicated armor based saving throws before. There are 2 issues with this suggestion:

1. Later in the game (higher level), due to insane stat and item damage inflation you will be able to remove armor with a couple of hits anyhow, or remove huge chunks of it, there is no point fine tuning a system that is already broken and exploitable.

2. "Grand Strategists" here on this forum seem to not understand the difference between random luck, and well defined probabilities of success, so any recommendation on the armor system will be disregarded with comments like "RNG LOL". I do not understand how they do not complain about skill + weapon damages being defined as (x) - (x+ y). OMG!!!, RNG!!!, what are we gonna do!!!!

3. As I have been reaching the end game, I found out that there are way more serious issues with this game, armor does not bother me at all. I do not mean to sound condescending, the game is still a Class A RPG, but it bothers me to see RPG developers do these things:

a) Wasting great potential.
b) Repeating the same mistakes over different releases.
c) Focusing on gimmicks, rather than delivering a solid classic.
d) Releasing beta versions, even after the game spends a year on early access
e) Story/Settting issues.

Anyway I might write something in detail when I actually complete the game.

Because there is no difference. If in D:OS 1, I have a status effect with a 70% chance to land on an enemy, and in D:OS 2, I have a status effect with 100% chance to land, but the target has 30% armor left so a 30% chance to resist (70% chance to land), what is the difference?

In either case, can you tell me with guaranteed certainty whether the status will land? The answer is no, you cannot.

It makes no difference whether the 70% chance is hard-coded into the skill, or whether the specific chance numbers are based on the armor remaining (which in this case is 30%) - it still comes down to a die is rolled behind the scenes to see if it lands in the 70% or the 30% side. Hence, there is no difference.

My opinion for a possible solution for a fix for armor would be simply making armor block a fixed amount of damage. This would however require a full on rework of the game, which obviously is not happening (Especially considering how the game in it's current state cannot be really considered 'done' when looking at nameless isle and Arx).

To illustrate my opinion:

For simplicities sake, let's assume a target has 100 health, 10 phys armor and 20 magic armor. A physical attack dealing 20 damage, would deal 10 to health, contra the 0 from magic. The armor would NOT be removed, so it would in general function like normal armor reduction like in many games. However, due to it not being percentage based, it would increase the viability of many factors in the game, like hybrid builds, since while they would deal lower damage in comparison to focused classes, they could more easily target the lowest armor.

Secondly, damage types such as piercing would increase in value (more like, given some actual function), due to bypassing armor directly, giving units a chance of attacking a high level armor unit, even if it's not their "element". Think Rogue stabbing some uber armored warrior, instead of a mage.

While an armor system like this would arguably make a group consisting of a single damage type 'weaker', but considering how it allows hybrids, as well as split teams to function better, I don't see it as an actual counter argument.

How CC's would be handled is another point to discuss with such an armor system. Honestly not that difficult to handle though, since you could for example have most effects apply through armor, were certain more powerfull CC's not being able to be applied if they didn't pass their armor value.

In other words, high armor targets (warriors) would more easily resist blunt trauma CC's, while mages on the other hand would not enjoy physical moves.

I honestly don't see how such a system wouldn't be a massive improvement over what we have here.

Edit: Something I forgot to add is how worthless healing in this game in general feels. This is naturally because without armor, health is largely useless. An armor system like this would remedy that a whole lot.

That is true, but remember, since such situations will happen many hundred times throughout the game, the law of statistics will, over time, result in expected values.



Right, but the point is that the player has partial control over the armor system with the original suggestion implemented.

So, while it is true that in situations where the enemy brings you down from 100% PA to 45% PA in 1 hit is effectively the same (I never claimed that my suggestion ubiquitously superior btw), next round you have the option to cast fortify and heart of steel. The enemy that does a follow up is only able to bring you down to 80% physical armor, reducing the risk of getting CC'ed from your direct actions. Sure, it still sucks when those 20% kicks in, but over time you will get expected values.

But perhaps the issue at hand is save-scumming when those (un)lucky CC's occur. If a player is incentivized to reload every time an important CC misses or hits, then perhaps the effect of hard CC's that cause you to skip a turn or lose control of a characters actions (this is especially true for Lone Wolf players) such as knock down, frozen, chicken, terrified etc are just simply too powerful. (regardless of whatever armor system is in place)

Perhaps fitting soft-cc substitutes should be implemented, so that when those 20% DO occur, the players reaction is "darn you!" instead of "Fuck-this-shit-F8"...

Of course, that final idea is so extensive that it would require it's own thread perhaps, since it would require global rebalancing of items, skills and enemies, but nonetheless an idea worthy of consideration...

I would note though, that DOS:2 has way more skills that allow you to counter hard CC's compared to DOS:EE (as far as I remember, correct me if I'm wrong), and since hard CC is to detrimental, I've equipped both my Lone Wolf companions with Fortify, Armor of frost, Chameleon Cloak, Soul Mate, Peace of Mind and First Aid. Probably a bit excessive, but you know...