Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Bugs & Technical Problems Combat mode infinite turn exploits

1) Some spells like Death Wish, when cast by an out-of-combat character upon an in-combat character, pull the out-of-combat character into combat. Other spells like Fortify, Armour of Frost, Living on the Edge, and probably others do not pull a character into combat when they are cast on a character in combat. This means a player can leave a character with these latter skills far away from the fight, out of combat, and the out of combat character can endlessly recast these buffs on the characters who are in combat, trivializing any fight with relatively free positioning.

2) By using one ability, then moving far away from combat with their remaining action points, characters are automatically removed from combat, allowing them to move back into combat to take another turn. Players can repeat this pattern to take infinite turns. As noted here the Escapist talent can be used to perform a similar exploit.

The second issue was discussed some time ago, and IIRC it was decided to keep track of which characters leave combat, so if they returned they would be added to the following turn. I'm not sure what the status is on that, though.

No news after 9 months? Is there any chance of any new patches for this game?

I beat a certain optional fight in Fort Joy yesterday (which I will not name because I don't know how to use spoiler tags) but the victory was hollow because my characters kept leaving combat and getting extra turns. Note that I did not want to exploit the game here! That's the problem, not only are these exploits possible, but you often run into them on accident. Moving vulnerable characters far from combat just makes sense tactically, but nope, any time you try to use distance tactically the combat system breaks down by dropping people from combat and then giving them extra turns when they rejoin.

I hope Larian will consider implementing something like the fix Raze mentioned above. One addition I would make to his idea is to add a confirmation dialog when a character is moving too far from combat and will be dropped from combat. Otherwise instead of accidentally getting extra turns, players will accidentally lose their turns when they try to use distance tactically. I actually wonder why moving far from combat should drop characters from combat mode at all. I imagine there's a technical reason for it... if using the escape action was the only way to exit combat mode you would not need the confirmation dialog.

EDIT: So after thinking about it a bit more, the confirmation dialog idea doesn't make any sense, and maybe "accidentally losing turns" would not really be an issue, since characters dropped from combat may lose a turn, but they still would get free movement, a free attack from stealth, and a reset on all their cooldowns, the sum of which is probably better than the turn they missed anyway.

There is another update planned.

I'm back again! I still think these issues tarnish what is otherwise one of the all-time great turn-based combat systems. So here's another idea for fixing them, in case anyone still cares (please care, at least in other games you may be working on *cough cough*):

1) All actions that affect a character in combat now cause the user to enter combat.
2) Characters no longer drop from combat solely because of distance from enemies. (I realize there may be some weird edge cases, so maybe just increase the distance needed to drop from combat without the Escape action by a very large amount, so it would take multiple turns of the fastest possible movement, jumping, etc.)
3) The Escape action now works as follows:
----a. Similar to Delay Turn, once you do anything at all on your turn you can no longer choose to try to Escape that turn.
----b. Once you choose to use your turn to try to Escape, you cannot do anything except move during your turn. (All abilities are disabled, except maybe movement abilities like Tactical Retreat.)
----c. If you move far enough away from enemies after taking the Escape action, you drop from combat.
4) The Escapist talent now [gives you 6 action points / gives a free use of Tactical Retreat / something similar] when you take the Escape action, replacing the talent's previous functionality.

You could also do fun things like change the Guerilla talent to let you Escape if no enemy has line of sight on you (EDIT: if you're in stealth... essentially streamlining what would happen if you left combat and stealthed back into combat... not sure about this idea!). Escaping should be a fun, normal thing to do, instead of a barrel of exploits. Even with these changes, the ability to escape to fully heal and reset all your cooldowns will still be very powerful.