Skilling locked with initial characters

[rookie21]

When leveling up, the abilities of characters that startet with a skill already cannot be raised. Like a bowman cannot level up the bow ability. Every other ability has a '+' to get it from zero to one, but the named ability has no button to push.

That's very bad considering that some skills (spells) need a certain level of experience like "twohanded = 3". Is that a bug? How can it be fixed. I think, it makes sense to raise the abilities you are using.

Hired companions have already a higher groundlevel like "twohanded =2".

Any help? Thanks!

[- DUHASSTMICH -]

You will need more than one skill point to advance skills beyond one point. If you had two or three skill points, you would see the plus option to advance.

[Talkingcamara]

The higher you want to raise a skill, the more skill points it costs.

Getting a skill to level 1 costs 1 point
Getting a skill to level 2 costs 3 points
Getting a skill to level 3 costs 6 points.
Getting a skill to level 4 costs 10 points
Getting a skill to level 5 costs 15 points.

This prevents you from getting high-level skills too quickly and progressing too fast. It's meant to pace you so that you have to work for the good stuff, and prioritize what skills you want to use.

Hope this helps :)

[Silvaren]

It looks like bad design of character progression. If player is "rewarded" for leveling up but in fact can't progress with skill throughout several levels (like the cost of 10-15 points) it's hardly rewarding. Every point should mean something.

[Talkingcamara]

Originally posted by Silvaren:

It looks like bad design of character progression. If player is "rewarded" for leveling up but in fact can't progress with skill throughout several levels (like the cost of 10-15 points) it's hardly rewarding. Every point should mean something.

Leveling up rewards the player ^^ Your abilities do more damage and you have access to more spells and talents. Unlocking higher levels of your abilities can also unlock more talents.

Also, reaching level 4 in a skill is a huge reward. You get to pick a master skill, many of which are pretty awesome and powerful. For example, Man-at-Arms has a master skill called Shackles of Pain where you choose an enemy who will take all the damage you do. Witchcraft has a Maser skill that makes you invulnerable (basically nothing can touch you) for 2 turns. Pyrokinetic has Meteor Shower. Lots of cool stuff. (It's not uncommon to only level a skill to 4 instead of 5 because how expensive it is.)

If you only had to use one point each time and there was no level restriction, you'd be able to do this stuff from the get-go. You wouldn't have to earn your cool abilities, which seems kinda lame. If you were to focus all your skill points in one area, you can reach level 4 in a skill by the time your character is level 6. (Or 4 if you took the Lone Wolf talent at the start of the game.) Although, you cannot learn any master skills until level 12, and some are locked until level 16.

What you mentioned about every point meaning something- they do. When you level up a skill, you unlock more spell slots. You can learn more spells and you have access to more powerful ones. It makes sense to have to work more for better stuff.

This also makes it so you have limited options for each character. You have to diversify your party, because you simply can't have one character do it all. (If you tried, you'd be missing out on the higher level goodies. Basically, having a more diverse kit has consequences, which motivates you to try new builds and have unique characters.)

[Silvaren]

Every point meaning something - I was refering to the points which character gain while leveling up, not the difference between e.g. rising Geomancy from level 3 to level 4. I mean that single point which character get while leveling up at lower levels and even 2 or 3 points granted by leveling up later on doesn't translate to characrer progression at all. If you want to progress in few skills making your character specialized in narrow techniques you have to hold those points for few levels until you gather enough to rise the skill to the higher rank. It's not rewarding. It's bad design.

In fact it's weird because ranks of skills allow to learn more abilities from novice, adept and master tier. Every ability has level restriction, so its restriction provides balance to not become OP too early, restriction itself. There is no need to drag skill progression via high cost in skill points.

What I read at the beginning (so I realised I made bad characters and restart from scratch after 3 hours) is that rank of skills doesn't affect power of the abilities. The higher the skill means only that the character can learn more abilities from that category/tiers. At least someone wrote that in the guide, here at Steam community forum. Acording to this guide, the only thing affecting power of abilities is attribute value (like Intelligence for magic abilities). And perhaps weapon stats in martial abilities like whirlwind, but I can't recall if that is true.

[rookie21]

Thank you for the really helpfull replies. As I started with Divinity OS #2 I was confused as there every point can be set at will. Have a nice time playing!

[Talkingcamara]

Thanks for sharing your perspective- I'll offer my thoughts below.

Only attributes and weapon stats affect abilities.
That is correct. Some Man-at-Arms and Souncdrel skills are based on your weapon's damage (but only the ones that say "requires a melee weapon or "requires a dagger"." Strength boosts many man-at-arms skills and Dexterity boost some Scoundrel skills, but not all. (Some are only based on your weapon.) Attribute levels affect your chance of a status effect (for example, Bitter Cold has a 70% chance of freezing the target at 5 intellgience, 80% at level 6 intelligence, 90% at 7, 100% at 8, 105% at 9, 110% at 10.) Leveling up increases the damage of your skills slightly. Hopefully this makes sense.

The rank of skills doesn't affect power of the abilities.
Correct. The rank of skills affects the AP cost of spells. If you have Aerothurge 1 and you find a piece of gear that gives you the ability to cast Chain Lightning (master skill), it's going to cost you 14 AP instead of 8.

The benefit of leveling up skills is unlocking more things to use, being able to use better skills, and lowering the AP cost of some skills. It simply wouldn't make sense to be able to get the better stuff without needing to put in some extra for it, in my opinion.

There is no need to drag skill progression via high cost in skill points
I see what you're meaning, but I think I disagree. It's better to restrict the points too, imo, because well, it's not like you're getting anything from leveling it up anyway. You still have to wait until you level up more. It makes more sense for the two to (somewhat) evenly progress together. But really, it doesn't matter either way, you're still not moving forward until you level up more.

Every point should mean something.
I understand what you mean (at least, I think I do.) So let's look at that and see what the effect would be if every level up costed 1 point.

You now have the ability to insttantly, at the character creation screen, level a skill to 5. However, you can't use most of the skillbooks until you're higher level. You now have another reason for people to play 3 hours in, realize they made a mistake (their extra 4 points in Pyrokinetic or whatever are pretty much useless). It feels like a fake reward at that point Sure, you have the levels in the skill, but you can't do anything with it. Or the complete opposite end- being ridiculously OP. You can now get 25% critical strike bonus at the character select screen. That's a huge bonus for someone who's level 1.

At the soft level cap of level 20, you have 49 (or 51 with the all skilled up talent) ability points. You have level 5 in all skills and have unlocked 60 skills to use. (Your action bar can only hold 50.) You have max points in the skill for your weapon. If you have Lone Wolf talent, you get +21 extra skill points. You can use those extra to get +7 attribute points. You now have enough attribute points to max out three of your stats.

Seems like that would be bad design to me! You can basically do everything, making the need for a second, third, or fourth character basically obselete. You'd just be destroying everything in your path without effort.

[Silvaren]

Originally posted by Talkingcamara:

Every point should mean something.
I understand what you mean (at least, I think I do.) So let's look at that and see what the effect would be if every level up costed 1 point.

You now have the ability to insttantly, at the character creation screen, level a skill to 5. However, you can't use most of the skillbooks until you're higher level. You now have another reason for people to play 3 hours in, realize they made a mistake (their extra 4 points in Pyrokinetic or whatever are pretty much useless). It feels like a fake reward at that point Sure, you have the levels in the skill, but you can't do anything with it. Or the complete opposite end- being ridiculously OP. You can now get 25% critical strike bonus at the character select screen. That's a huge bonus for someone who's level 1.

At the soft level cap of level 20, you have 49 (or 51 with the all skilled up talent) ability points. You have level 5 in all skills and have unlocked 60 skills to use. (Your action bar can only hold 50.) You have max points in the skill for your weapon. If you have Lone Wolf talent, you get +21 extra skill points. You can use those extra to get +7 attribute points. You now have enough attribute points to max out three of your stats.

Seems like that would be bad design to me! You can basically do everything, making the need for a second, third, or fourth character basically obselete. You'd just be destroying everything in your path without effort.

Yes, current system of character progression woudn't fit if upgrading skills would cost 1 rank for 1 point.

I picked few skills during character creation and first few levels I get only 1 point while upgrading those skills requires at least 2 point per skill. It just feel bad at lower levels. Player gains experience, hits next level and "meh, I can't raise my skills", let's wait until I level up". And the pacing in D:OS at the beginning is really slow - for a game oriented arround the combat there is to much walking and talking right after prologue and it takes several hours to do most quest in the town. Then clearing areas arround the town gives much more exp from pure combat and levels start to fly.

I think it could be done better.

[Talkingcamara]

Oh DOS has it's flaws for sure. I absolutely love DOS and Larian Studios, but I often wonder what on earth they were thinking with some things.

What my experience was with combat is that early game everything is ridiculously hard, and late-game things are a bit too easy. That's one con to the game for sure. I'm not sure I'd say divinity is super combat-oriented though. The story elements are a big part. Yeah the story is kinda cheesy and DOS is definetly not known for it's great storyline lol. But I would say it's also a component.