A Warcraft 3 Death Knight (Arthas) in Divinity?

[GeneralMacek]

Hello. Is there possible to raise my character as a death knight from Warcraft in Divinity? Wielding a two-handed sword, wearing plate armor and commanding powers of frost and unholy to slay his enemies?

I have an idea on which classes to give to my companions (with extended party size mod), but I might need to know which classes fit to certain companions. I'd appreciate any help or tips, thank you.

[Yojo0o]

Kinda. You can play a warfare-scaling undead warrior and dip into Necromancy and Hydrosophistry for support magic, which will mostly take the form of improving your armor values while you fight. You won't have as much magical power as Arthas would exhibit, but you'll still be pretty badass.

DOS2 expects that you'll scale the damage you're dealing continually throughout your adventure to keep up with corresponding increase in power of higher level enemies. Because of this, you won't want to do something like splitting between strength and intelligence, because that'll mean you're just sub-par at two things instead of good at one thing. For your spellcasting, focus on stuff that doesn't care about your intelligence score, like armor-repairing spells, maybe some light summoning, and other utility.

[canuck250]

With dos 2, you have all the freedom to change and shape your party. So overall it is to what you want it to be. If you have more then the 4 party size, start off with a mix of stuff to figure out what you like and how it would support your death frost knight. Your character won't be optimum in a sense because "death" spells in dos2 will be necro which cause physical damage and your frost spells will do magic damage. This is fine tho as they both scale with int so that will be your main stat. Also since necro scales with physical you would also want to boost warfare to scale that so it will have synergy with your sword... But really it won't hit for much. Overall never worry about overlapping some dips for important skills such as movement ones or adrenaline.

So for your death knight you will want Hydro, necro, warfare and poly. Only points in hydro and necro to use the spells you want to use, then max poly so you can max your int and max warfare for your necro/sword skills/dmg.

For your party
Warrior/Rogue/Ranged all will help your necro side, killing things weak on phys armour. Also good for knockdown CC.

Geo is great for armour buffs and CC. Their earthquake does magic damage but it's knockdown is as said above on physical. So some tricky but good synergy there with your knight.

Pyro is not going to be that good here, only use it for dip for some buffs as you want to be freezing and if you do have a geo can make the battlefield trickier for your icespells.

Hydro would be great support for heals/mag armour and better field control and extra ice. I would def have both rain and blood rain on this guy and your main so you have huge control to make the field wet. Plus blood on the ground is needed for a powerful necro skill and it can be frozen with ice.

Air will add a lot of damage and cc when their is no ice, since you have a boosted party size, can have a separate member to focus on this (otherwise I would just make a hydro/air) but still dip them so they can at least cast rain but I would at least try blood rain on them also for even more blood set up for your MC.

[Bauti]

If you play with mods you could have INT swords which could help you to shape your build into Int/Con so that your spells can actually do as much damage as your basic attacks

[phenir]

Hybrid damage will gut your dps output. Frost (hydro) and necro is int while 2h is str obv. Either get a mod that changes the way attribute damage scaling works or don't use damage spells, only taking hydro and necro for utility like bone armor, necro summons, shackles, deathwish, living on the edge, frost armor, and uh rain I guess. Hydro is kind of crap for utility really.

[GeneralMacek]

Thank you, I will take these tips to consideration. Truth be told, I am really bad when it comes to choosing, so I do not know which compations will have which skills and proficiency. Like I know Izfan would make a good ranger, but the Red Prince... I wanted him to be a ranged character, but I do not know.

[phenir]

When you get them to join your party, you can choose what skills they start with. You get to choose from several presets. Keep in mind starting skills do not limit how you can build a character and you can freely respec once you get to the end of act 1.

[canuck250]

Originally posted by GeneralMacek:

Like I know Izfan would make a good ranger

Everyone is a blank sheet in DOS 2. As I mentioned, you have a lot of freedom for building in this game. The only real cost is buying spell books, which is not that much money and there is more then enough ways to make money in this game. With 1 character with high barter, just taking every white labelled thing, even candles, you will have more money then you can spend, throw in pick pocketing and it just is never a worry. The respec mirror is free so you can really shape your party to what works for you.

[GeneralMacek]

Originally posted by canuck250:

Originally posted by GeneralMacek:

Like I know Izfan would make a good ranger

Everyone is a blank sheet in DOS 2. As I mentioned, you have a lot of freedom for building in this game. The only real cost is buying spell books, which is not that much money and there is more then enough ways to make money in this game. With 1 character with high barter, just taking every white labelled thing, even candles, you will have more money then you can spend, throw in pick pocketing and it just is never a worry. The respec mirror is free so you can really shape your party to what works for you.

I see. I admit I have a problem with blank slates, as I can mess that up. But I suppose that's how I will learn. To try, error and repeat. I still have a lot to learn about the game (and I want to learn, as it looks fun). I might just start over and disable mods I installed so I can play first through vanilla and then probably expand with mods.

[canuck250]

I feel dos2 is one of the least punishing for this, so really do not worry about try, error and repeat. A couple key things for building.

Most builds you only want to level their class enough to use the spells they want, you often scale the damage elsewhere. Also con is a wasted stat unless you need it to equip gear, as armour and magic armour are the most important thing.

Physical damage dealers gain the most from the warfare skill. So even archers or rogues want to max that. Same with the necro class as their skill do physical damage.

Magic casters scale from int, so that is why poly which gives you extra attribute points is how you scale them. Necro also scales with this, as they cast magic spells that do physical damage. Geo casts magic spells, that do magic damage but a lot of their cc checks vs physical armour.

After maxing the damage and enough points for skills then you want to do some dips (movement skills dip earlier for when needed, tactical retreat from ranger is amazing, phoenix dive from warfare is good)

Also I would recommend looking up class skills online, because there are some that you only get from hidden crafts which you can do asap, so def worth looking at those. Something like throw dust which is a geo/ranger skill that has a unique removal effect, so then your geo does the ranger dip for tactical retreat can easily use this skill also. It is a bit situational, but it is game changing in some situations.

A random tangent about a couple things I like and some synergy, not saying you have to do this but an example of how you can make a squad work together for tougher fights. Torturer on geo is amazing for worm tremor. Teleport/nether swap are amazing and can not have too much access to these (if you have increased party size, I would try all mages focusing on their school with a dip in air just for these 2 skills). Then if your geo moves after your movers, you can group up enemies with movement skills,
then worm tremor them in place. At any point any of your casters puts blood rain (as I mentioned in an earlier post) down on the spot they all get trapped. Your MC then uses grasping hands and nukes everything. Using skin graft and adrenaline, you MC can really blow their load for a turn also making all that set up destroy anything.

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by canuck250:

Geo casts magic spells, that do magic damage but a lot of their cc checks vs physical armour.

Impalement and Corrosive Spray? Wouldn't call them a lot, but it is worth mentioning that Impalement's criple effect only works if the target has no physical armor, as it's available early on.

Originally posted by canuck250:

Also I would recommend looking up class skills online, because there are some that you only get from hidden crafts which you can do asap, so def worth looking at those. Something like throw dust which is a geo/ranger skill that has a unique removal effect, so then your geo does the ranger dip for tactical retreat can easily use this skill also. It is a bit situational, but it is game changing in some situations.

Battle Stomp also removes surfaces and clouds and is a level 1 warfare skill.
For an overview see Crafted Skills here:
https://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Skill+Books
Interesting for your Death Knight could be Vampiric Hunger, granting you 50% lifesteal for 2 turns.

[canuck250]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Impalement and Corrosive Spray? Wouldn't call them a lot, but it is worth mentioning that Impalement's criple effect only works if the target has no physical armor, as it's available early on.

Earthquake which is knockdown is physical and a huge aoe. But to what I remember they have more cc that hits vs physical then magical so to me that is a lot of it. But semantics in the end. You mostly want to either root(mag) or knockdown(phys). You can bypass magic armour with a talent.

Originally posted by canuck250:

Battle Stomp also removes surfaces and clouds and is a level 1 warfare skill.

Yup, which is a cone that is connected to you while like in the name the other one you can throw. It was just an example of a skill, many other interesting options in there for op to discover.


Although I also found I never used vamp hunger much, the living armour talent does well enough without it, most times I rather do other things then use it. But diff styles might use it more but for my bruiser caster anyways I did not. Same thing with the dust spells, I never used them much but it is just example into the extra options. In this case I was using a companion as an example to be a geo, where they might not want to have a melee weapon so battle stomp won't be available, tac retreat is great so a dip to ranger makes sense where a dip to warrior does not as that character will be only doing magic damage. Another nice thing is ranger gives boosted damage to height advantage. So tac retreat into high ranged magic aoe is strong. Or even just to stay safe and be more a control mage as the reason I love tac ret is it gives a bonus ap the next turn, very nice.

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by canuck250:

[snip]

There's nothing wrong with what you say or suggested, I just wanted to add a few things and yes I forgot about Earthquake :)

Vamp hunger with Living Armour and Armour of Frost are nice early game, where your strength based characters don't have much magic armor and it fits the Arthas theme.
I guess later on you wont need the heal from Vamp hunger.