Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Initiative, how it works now?

Besides the element of surprise (= you have the first shots) is a valid tactical concept.

Also, you are arguing to keep teleport in the game because it opens up tactical options. Yeah sure. And initiative doesn't? What is worse, removing an entire tier of strategy considerations (options vs. power, both on the battlefield and in character builds) from the game, or simply making teleport affect friendlies and inanimate objects only?

Teleport should never ever have had an offensive use. It leads to a myriad of problems, as we can see here: initiative borked, random 'grounded' attributes, etc. Creating surfaces etc. is easy (and tactical!) enough, you should never have been able to vacuum entire enemy armies in for splortching them with AoE nukes.

P.S./Edit: That said, actually, why not? Heretical concept, I know, but imagine a party of four highly-trained, dedicated mages on an actual battlefield (err... I mean imagined actual non-game battlefield... *cough*). They'd set up deadly combos exactly as above, playing to their strengths. Of course they'd wipe the floor with enemy armies. It'd probably be pretty boring to play barring unforeseen wrenches in the gear but if you *want* to play that way, who are we to decide you aren't allowed to? The only issue I can see is that teleport may be available for too little investment, you should have to invest deeply into mageing to be able to set up such magic traps, not just dump 2 points somewhere and start vacuuming. E.g. teleport with aero 2: teleport inanimate objects. Aero 4: teleport friendlies. Aero 6: teleport enemies with no magic armor. Aero 10: teleport any enemy.