Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Constitution rework?

I propose we remove vitality scaling as you level and make it so constitution gives a small amount of hp (15 is the number im thinking of atm) if these numbers are too low it can also be added to gear or increased.
I suggest this for 3 main reasons.
1. With this health will be more scarce and worth considering especially vs piercing
2. It will be more detrimental to have -cons applied through diseased and elf active
3. To increase the chance of being burst from full if you do not hybridize your stat distribution to tank magic and physical damage.
I am aware this makes the game harder since rather than bring cons to a point where you will want to level it, it will drag it down and force you to level it.

Removing vitality scaling entirely would mean reworking every damage number in the game. A lot of work. Constitution isn't that bad, just needs a slight buff, perhaps some kind of additional effect on top of vitality bonus, preferably not just another form of extending life, but like how con increased maximum AP in the original.

Con could still increase the maximum number of AP gained within one turn, perhaps, given you can get up to 8 or 10 or possibly more, with adrenaline, haste, elf racial, glass cannon, warlord, and tactical retreat. You'd start being able to gain up to 6 AP a turn (like if you had glass cannon), and every 2 or 3 points of CON you'd gain another maximum AP. This is to say, this is the maximum amount of AP you can GAIN in a turn, not have at any one time (like as now.)

This would help balance out the AP overload of these various skills, and allow further additions of +AP skills. Want to be an AP Junkie? You need to have the stamina to perform several actions in quick succession. With 2 Con to +1 AP max, you'd probably only need to invest 8-10 points for a realistic maximum AP gain, but at least that's something, especially as a limit for earlier on in the game.

But that is what they don't want to have. That is what we had in the first game: Speed increased the AP gain per turn and Con gave the possibility to increase the max AP you could store. I liked this just because of the fact, it supported the feeling of getting stronger and better. In the current build only the damage will show that got stronger and better. Even at level 30 you won't be casting more skills or different skills, than you could already cast at level 8. The amount of available AP will be still the same and if skills don't receive requirements you can still learn the high level skills at low level.

Personally I was always the fan of having Con increase your maximum Armor and Magic Armor... just like Strength and Intelligence.

But less so then both of those so it doesn't replace the need to crossclass.

Crossclassing just for 2% more armor from Int/Str? Why should that ever be worthwile?

In my opinion constitution is useless atm. There are too many ways to boost vitality. Lots of healing spells, healing potions, magic and physical armor buffs. Those 7% at low levels doesn't do shit when a pyromancer skeleton hits you with 73 damage in 2 spells. And there is also no point in being tanky if you can't damage or disable your enemies. It is one thing when there are a lot of supporting spells on a unit that make difference. Healing, buffing, debuffing, disabling each turn making enemies want to kill him first. Like some cleric but not with useless bloodsucker and bloodrain. And the other thing when it is useless peace of crap with 3 move speed that looses half of his vitality just in order to reach the enemy. Of course the devs have some picture in their minds and know what the game will look like later on, but still.

Pain reflection and constitution make sense, but when you spend points in constitution you lose potential damage from strength, and when you max pain reflection, you have no raw damage at all. It is a bad thing that skillpoints and attribute point bonuses are multiplied by each other. This makes you want to use the most effective path. But I am not a new player, that's why I know this thing. There should be more ways to connect attributes, skills and spells so that to create different playable (useful) classes.

The problem isn't constitution per se, but again the armor/protection system. Too often the decision about win or loss is done way before HP comes to play. So why bother with it at all...
That needs to change.

But in general I have to say, that I dislike that there is just one attribute at max 2 that are interesting for a specific playstyle. All attributes should have an impact, imho. A useless one should actually be the exception.
Again this is a thing I love about The Dark Eye/(Das Schwarze Auge).
There the base attack in melee for example is calculated by: (stregnth+courage+agility)/5
Same goes for base defense: (strength+agility+intuition)/5
And many other alike, like magic resistance, evasion, ranged, stealing, sneaking, endurance, magic...

In other words a lesser impact with greater versatility that evens out the extremes.

Dark eye one was nice but people that played Blackguard before (Dark Eye system) will know that even with that system, all you do is cap everything that has to do with Initiative and damage first so you can buff a crapton and proceed to rekt people.

There's really no escaping from the "Initiative buffed glass cannon build" is godlike in turn-based game.

===

Flat HP on Con won't work. What we need is to add more con-based element into the game like

-Con provides Physical damage resist up to a certain cap that can be unlocked with a talent. (like 2% per point until 20 and go up to 30 or 40 with a talent)

Well, I just referred to the base concept here. In this case that more than one attribute can be used and adds flexibility that way, giving more attributes proper purposes without making one a need for everything.

Oh and... Please don't assume Blackguards is in any way a good or even acceptable example of the TDE/DSA ruleset.
True PnP players most probably will skin you alive for that notion. ^^
In fact the system there is at best a shifted silhouette. And while initiative is still important, even in pnp, most of the skills found in BG work completely different. Except of the base values there is nothing much left of the actual TDE system...
There is a lot of stuff missing, like preparations, conditional attacks, or the fact that powerful attacks/actions aren't instant. For example a "fireball" (called ignisphaero), while potentially powerful but no onehit killer, is cast over at least 3 rounds! Providing chances to counter it. Same goes for other things like summonings, rituals and so on...
So again, BG is by no means representative for the real TDE/DSA, and not even a good example of what could be done.

Don't worry people who hold Blackguards as an example of "What to do" will be silenced by its sequel. Which is pretty much bad in everyway.

Maybe we can work slowly towards a consensus. People say that CON is bad because armor is king. Okay,

What if Constitution gave 7% health and 1% to both Physical and Magical armor? Is that...
- Too small a buff
- Too big a buff


What if Constitution gave 7% health and 3% to both Physical and Magical armor? Is that...
- Too small a buff
- Too big a buff


What if Constitution gave 10% health and 2% to both Physical and Magical armor? Is that...
- Too small a buff
- Too big a buff

Health bar is not that important for new combat system compared to armour. It is better to give +3% hp and +5% armour than +7% hp and +3% armour.

Other options even weaker. You can cast one or more cc effect every turn with every character. Enemies can do the same. So, pure hp bar is not important at all.

E.g. for 5lvl party it is simple to take out enemy with 10k hp and no armour. Yes, it will take a lot of time but it pretty straightforward. But 10k armour and 200-300hp with healing spells, for example, is way too hard, close to impossible.

Well not every enemy is going to have hard CC effects to apply to you every turn, so high health against a high-damage enemies with little or not CC won't be useless. Especially once you start getting CC immunity gear and a bunch of status removal skills, lower amounts of armor won't necessarily always outclass higher amounts of health. While players will feast on anything with no armor, enemies might not every fight. Obviously armor is better than health, but it's not worthless.

That said, if Con gave 10% vitality and +2% magic/physical armor, it'd be much more compelling, at least for tanks. Anything less wouldn't make much of a difference I don't think. I still think it should have some kind of non-health benefit like increasing maximum AP gain per turn though, so it's not purely a matter of defense but something opens up certain strategies.

I think the main problem with constitution is armor being so much more useful than health. Most of the time when armor is down you are instantly dead. But what if 20% of all damage bypassed armor? So that every attack deals 80% armor damage and 20% health damage. That'd both make health more useful and cc harder to apply since it'd be harder to break armor.

Hmmm... that might work to make Constitution more appealing.

It would however, make the Hothead talent worse since even just taking only 9-10 damage would lower your health from the maximum even if you had 300+ armor. Not saying that makes your idea a non-starter, just mentioning the fact.

I wrote about this earlier. Some percentage of damage should pierce armor, giving some percentage of chance to apply a status. Current system must be reworked for sure. Armor, resistances, vitality, dodging, damage estimation - everything. It is not hard in terms of coding, it is a bigger challenge to do the math and balance all this in a proper way.

I like how armor completely blocks cc. Hate it when combat depends on luck. What I don't understand is why armor also completely blocks damage.

There is already piercing available for physical damage dealers at least why not create a system for magical piercing?IF such a thing was in place i would also allow some cc's to pass through it this doesn't gut the system currently in place which i love but it also changes things up.

What piercing physical damage currently has is not enough. One of the biggest complaints about armor system is that it puts mixed parties at a disadvantage because you have to deal with 2 armor bars instead of one. Piercing armor would solve this problem.

Shall i make a thread to encourage discussion of that idea?