This is one amazing mod and after three seperate runs I think I can safely give feedback on balance. Note that it will not count the fun factor but simply what I felt was underwhelming or overwhelming in terms of balance. I also can no longer play without enemy randomization mod on tactician+ so keep that in mind also when I talk about balancing.

Might/speed/magic: Felt balanced. Although I did find myself investing more in speed across the board thanks to all the essentials it provides. Speed is very much gear independent for performance and does not require gear pre planning except the weapon. 6% damage compared to other two's 8% was a nice touch for this fact. Not having to go all in one stat is god sent. Seriously, thanks for this mod. I forgot what hybrid, thus fun, was on vanilla.

Constitution: Now this is a bit tricky stat to justify investing in. The obvious combination would be to have a shield wielding 'tank' with decked out retribution for free taunts or cleaving tanky 'berserker' in the middle of fray to maximize its usuage. But pretty much every enemy in the game has cc option and I found myself not finding cons all that useful as without armor/magic s buff, the con invested character will spend more time cc'ed and not contributing. One would argue that it's still useful just to have enough cons to wield shield. Then instead focus on finesse for dodge bonus and have frost armor on all charcter to negate magical cc, but this is more of a bandaid solution. Thus my suggestion would be to give more incentive to try out cons heavy character by giving 1 resist per two cons. On default game, my dps/summon/support character would end with 10-30 resist and my frontliner would end with 30-50 across the board. I'm well aware that you can reach 60-80 resist for certain resist on vanila if you save up those low level uniques but that's at the cost of significant defense. As I usually see characters ending with 30-50 on main stats and 5-20 for constitution, 1 resist per two cons wouldn't be game breaking but would tempt players to try out the defensive option that helps with cc defense from magic.

Perception: Good overall except maybe the accuracy bit. The crit at 3 is perfect since we no longer have to rely on two handed (Thanks larian -_- ) to take care of everything and archer mage hybrid with sacri talent is a viable option after the death of three slot runes. The reason I felt accuracy was a bit op is that it effectively leaves enemy 'rogue' types without any form of defense. Using magic already deal with those squishy rogues but the 2 accuracy vs 1 dodge makes it so that the rock scissor paper dynamic among damage/dodge/armor a bit weighted towards none dodge mechanics. Even on endgame I rarely see rogues with more than 30-40 dodge. The accuracy boost nullify it completly with little investment while magic melt them anyway. My suggestion would be 1 instead of 2 accuracy. It would make people adapt to situation instead of brute forcing through rogues with left clicks.

Necromaner: Good for laughs and mostly balanced. But it does sometimes feel op if you calculate your last strikes with you necro character since it can snowball out of control. Maybe two turns instead of three? Not only do resurrected mob supply damage they also serve as meatbags along with other existing summons. Towards endgame three turn resurrected mobs feel a bit steam-rolly given that calculating deathblow isn't that hard either through DoT or critical flat dmg.

Summon: Love it. It opens up interesting build option for leadership summoner who utilize proximity buffs by going semi tanky and placing him/herself in between ranged summons and melee summons. Feels balanced too since this would mean you'd go for the risk reward playstyle. it happens by placing totems near you thus risking aoe death of totems in exchange for damage boost reward. How can you say no to this after seeing a totem attack twice sometimes like a boss?

Duelist: Lets you try out duel wielding one handed weapon without fearing death in one turn from monsterous chain physical dmg. Although ranged rogue type do tend to eat them alive regardless of the investment thanks to 2 accuracy per wits.

Berserk: Genius idea. One thing I did find odd though was the fact that ground effects trigger this while they are walking. I'm not sure how coding works but if it is due to cleave triggering on any and every damage, it does make your squishy melee builds a bit more at risk compared to ranged without being rewarded for it. For example if I place a melee character next to geist and use my attack, I can accept that I get cleaved while I'm attacking on my turn since that's the risk I took to dish in damage. The reward is that maybe my character will get to cleave that geist on enemy turn too. But if there is ground effect near geist (let's face it, divinity os is all about turning the default landscape into a scene from hell with ground effects) it'll almost always trigger chain cleave if that geist decides to walk and reliably take out all melee characters near it. This becomes more pronounced towards the end where enemy boss types can one or two shot your characters with it's bloated cleave. Again, not sure if it's possible to code ground effect trigger differently. As it stands you can even try exploiting by simply making your berserk character walk non stop near enemy after putting down fire grounds.

Specialist: Can feel a bit op if you have multiple ranged characters. I tend to build for half close half ranged comp overall because I'm a D&D nerd but it can shut down entire map as most enemies come with multiple abilities and tend to spam them until they run out of cd. Still, 10 investment for 30 percent is probably not unreasonable though.

Voidtouched: Great randomization that brings a lot to table. Nothing to nitpick or critic here. One of those damned if you do damned if you don't but love it all the same mechanic. Would be great if you could supply added skill description for people wanting to try out the mod for the first time. Rip skillbars lol. Multiple skill bars in screen plox larian.

Leadership: Love the new change. It's still not a priority stat thanks to the fact that grouping your guys near each other is the recipe to eating aoe that'll most likely result in a wipe. But it does open up possiblity of semi tanky buffer summoner where positioning counts for a lot instead of "where is muh highground" summoner we are all accustomed to.

Perseverance: Misery loves company? Ideal party always come equipped with tools to bail out your party so I didn't think much about about this stat all that much as AI are smart enough to target characters vulnerable to cc. However, paired with newly improved retribution this can be a beast and actually make a tank feel relevent without breaking the game. Hard to say if it's balanced or not though. Maybe I should try 3 tank 1 support run sometimes to stress test this stat.

Retribution: Did a tank exist in vanila os 2? No. Does it exist with this mod? Yes. I was a bit afraid at first since it sounded way too useful. Giving tank free rein of all agro usually ends up making fights feel cut and dry and by the number as I found out from playing MMO. However with enough berserk mobs in place who'll give your tank sufficient threat at all times it ended up being an amazing edition. And it's not like your taunts will reach enemy backline all the time either so no problem there. You can only go 4 party members with 4 teleport before you get sick of it as that was the only true tanking in vanila game. All heil glorious teleport and our lord and savior satan.

Aerothurge: Unfortunately this is the only skill that felt severly unbalanced. I tried to see it as balanced since I love the concept but after three runs I must say that it needs adjustments. Let's say for example, there is a mod that turns enemies into chicken per 3 hits regardless of armor. Before an observer would voice concern that it might break the game, he'd have to account for the fact that melee is generally not an aoe (unless they are grouped for it) and thus the percentage might reflect that. However, aero is designed to be aoe skills with target tracking to boot. A hard cc means that it prevents incoming damage, leave mobs for followups, and lets your party recover/reposition. One must be very careful when dealing with modifying hard diable in any game. As experiment to prove this I did a run with only one character graced with 5 aero. He straight up carried the game. Then I did a run with 4 aero characters and they weren't getting hit once on most fight with both enemy randomization + harder difficulty mods on. 5 percent per point is just absurd. I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say 2 percent per points would still be in the realm of top notching skill investment. 3 percent maybe if you prioritize fun factor. Majority of the mobs in the game are fire immune not air immune.

Geomancer: Love it. This is a good alternative if you are sick of overloading your character with over 9000 fat armor pots to remain relevant in a fight without getting chain knocked down. Speed in oil lets you consider going oilmancer melee hybrid that feels unique.. except when you are up against necrofire mobs. Those oil hybrid spellbooks finally get to see some action.

Huntsman: I get why you voiced your concern for this skill as it does let you feel like you have a safety net on your rogue characters. However I'd argue that that's a playstyle choice rather than a balance factor. We all know by now that we can pyramid exploit, pickpocket while talking exploit, idol chain rez exploit, and highground teleport exploit. However the skill concept itself doesn't present unbalanced factor in a straight up battle. When a game offers too much diversity, us players accept unwritten agreement that we limit ourselves from making use of certain unintentional feature as part of roleplay. Can huntsman be exploited? Hell yes. But it's just something you don't do to make your play feel more genuine just the same as other exploits. I'd leave it as it is since it's fun and unique, and also not unbalanced unless you intentially decide to play in a manner you are not meant to.

Hydrosophist: I did run into 15second infinite recovery glitch but that seems to be fixed for the most part. In terms of balance though I think you can bring down the aoe hp recovery to 1% instead of 2. Since we get 4 ap by default, 2 percent (which could scale up to 20 and more) makes your hydro character heal up entire party from brink of death to full without acutally using a heal spell when you account for haste/adrenaline/turn delay. The game was never meant for this much healing when you look at talents like living armor or skills like soulmate/equilize etc. 2 is just way too useful especially if you run several hydro character with living armors attached, effetively negating the magical threat aspects of the game.

Pyrokinetic: Perfect. Pyro was easily the worst magic skill in the game thanks to wonky targetting, lack of cc, high ap cost, and generally high enemy fire resist. I've just grown to embrace the utility side of pyro until this mod. Going executioner sacri pyro never felt this good before. The skill still lacks cc except the whip so I'd say it's exactly where it needs to be at in terms of power level balance. It ain't no end all be all aero that's for sure.

Scoundrel: Doesn't feel situational at all to me. Feels highly useful. The thing about scoundrel is that you never go full scoundrel even on default. The skills are there so that you either A) go for squishy archer unnoticed and bushwhack him B) Support your mages by silencing or sleep/shield stripping threats gunning for them. This skill just lets you do that but more efficiently without heavy investment as speed stat takes care of mobility. The way I look at it is that it works as a free disable against enemy backline with plenty option to bail out of the situation if it doesn't proc in order to do your secondary job. Your rogue didn't proc the passive on enemy archer on high ground? It's time for smoke grenade or rupture tendon+chicken as any good rogue should. It did proc? Nice! Then turn your attention to your mage that's about to have a split skull from berserking two hander mob with your hybrid teleport build or throw dust or one of millions of cc as any good rogue should.

Warfrare: Simply amazing. I'd go even far as to say it's the signiture skill of this mod. Just wanted to let you know that us jaded min maxer with lol 10+ warfare appreciate what you've done with this darkness my old friend. Quadra backstab, turret totems, 4 projectile from dual wand, 4 mirage slash from dual single handed, need I say more? On the balance side though, it really gave us a reason to go for opportunist even on characters that weren't the meta crit two hander. It even made leadership more pronounced, a skill that can never get enough love frankly. Why larian never implimented #percent_repeatattack on default game I'll never know. It doesn't break the game and makes your feel like the dancing whirlwind of death you are meant to be (because objectively speaking it's just +damage just the same as default warfare except no longer limited to physical). Seriously, thanks for tweaking this skill.

Sneak: Needs metal gear solid sound effect when you are discovered. Also need cardboard box instead of barrel or rock because reasons.

Grenade: I only ever use love/tremor/terror/chemical warf when I'm tagged with silence so I can't really comment on the damage side of things. Maybe I should try super tank with no investment other than Perse + Retri who uses grenade mostly for damage to feel the difference.

Enemy stat: I don't really know if this is balanced or not since I'm playing with enemy randomization and I'm left hobbling from most fight mostly thanks to aoe debuffs. it probably is though since I didn't feel like I was gettting one shotted by common mobs. Getting hit twice from same mobs usually stripped whatever armor/magic s I had on target character, resulting in follow up cc from second enemy turn. Take it with a grain of salt. The balance factor of enemy number is much harder to tell than from my customizable party as each encounter will feel different.

Welp, that's it from me. Sorry if it sounded like an essay and thanks if you read all these. I really do feel like this is among the best mods out there in terms of creativity and game factor sensitivity. I just wrote what I felt to maybe make suggestions to make the experience even more balanced and fun for other players and myself. Keep up the good work! Much love.

This was an absolute joy to read. Thank you very much! I'll reply more constructively and at length sometime after I arrive home from work.

Thank you for your detailed feedback, I really appreciate it and your review was honestly more shining than I expected it to be. I "balanced" the mod with fun in mind first and balance second, meaning I was always concerned something was going to turn out ridiculous. (I tried my best to avoid this being the case, but not at the cost of gameplay experience)

From the sounds of your message... surprisingly few things have.

I was so happy to read your praises about all of the various aspects you enjoyed and that you thought worked from both a gameplay and balance perspective. I won't address those (as happy as they've made me, especially Voidtouched which I put a lot of effort into!) because I'll end up typing about six essays of my design philosophy, which will really only amount to endless ranting. :p

Aerothurge

Aerothurge is something you make excellent points about, but here's the thing:

Aerothurge proccing on AoE is actually a glitch. (the more you know!)

I intended for Aero to only work on skills you target somebody specific with (meaning the main target of Dazing Bolt would still proc for example) and attacks. However, I used a bad story call which results in any damage dealt proccing Aerothurge instead.

Now, I could revert it to the original idea and make it proc only on single-target effects, but you already made a compelling argument against doing that: Aerothurge is predominantly AoE. This means that players would be limited in their usage of skills in the same tree if they want to benefit.

In short, I think nerfing the probability is a good idea. However, as I once said with Berserk, I don't like straight-up nerfing something without reworking it and giving its prior users alternative playstyles to make up for the one that they've blatantly lost. I will have to figure out a rework.

Plus I always felt that Aerothurge was the least creative of all of the passives. It was due a rework anyway.

Hydrosophist

I was surprised by your commentary on Hydrosophist. Never before did I ever think I would hear the words "healing" and "OP" in the same sentence when talking about a game where damage was once the meta and stacking Warfare to oneshot opponents was the most efficient form of crowd control. I... I think I'm gonna tear up a little.

I both agree and disagree with you, and here's a summary:

• 2% healing per action is not something I consider overpowered, even with 1AP skills due to the fact that repeatedly casting 1AP skills probably means you are not really dealing any damage. In short, you're making a change of playstyle to benefit from Hydrosophist to a high level. I have no qualms with rewarding it to this extent.
  
• Living armor is something you've made excellent points about. Replenishing magic armour from hydrosophist does create problems for magic casters.
  
• Healing was very underwhelming and even useless in the base game. I have boosted Hydrosophist's healing percentage increase and given it the passive heal effect it has in an attempt to counteract this.

With these points in mind, I'm hesitant to nerf the HP regeneration on Hydrosophist at all. I don't think it deserves it - and I believe that the only issue is, sadly, Living Armor. I can't do anything about this unless I alter the talent, which is something I'm not keen to do due to the large amount of talent mods out there.

Your points will still be taken into consideration and I may make some other workaround.

Endurance

Excellent points. Thank you for your feedback. I actually feel that giving players 1 resist all per point in Endurance would not be a bad idea: this makes the theoretical cap 30% gain if you max Endurance, which players will rarely do. I'll see about adding this in the next update.

Perseverance

You make a good point about it being surprisingly weak. The best strategy to use with it is Glass Cannon + max Perseverance, which will result in enemies tripping over themselves to apply statuses to your Glass Cannon character, often stunning themselves in the process.

Come Definitive Edition's version of this mod (which is a while away), I will likely increase the percentage chance of status return to 8% per point.

Conclusion

Thank you for your feedback! You've been super informative and demonstrated a very strong grasp of each skill's uses and applications: even Scoundrel's applications, which I thought rather obscure. I'll be looking into some reworks of the issues you mentioned.

P.S. ... Did you know that Specialist doesn't only work with ranged characters? ;) Why not try giving one of your Specialists a melee weapon and see what happens?

@ the Specialist suggestion, give it to a dagger-wielding rogue for extra fun.

Thanks for such a prompt reply. After reading your post, so much of what I saw started to make sense. And btw you are damn right about voidtouched being awesome. It's like that one uncle you see on holiday gathering who you can somehow have easy conversation with even though he is 30 years older than you and you can't wait until next holiday to talk to him again. Anyway, now that I understand some of your design choices and reason behind them, I'll just throw in few brainstorming ideas real quick that I thought about while playing.

Aerothurge: So that's why it felt so hellishly powerful. Single target would have made a lot of sense in terms of power lvl even though aero's skill dynamic doesn't exactly allow that. Here are just random suggestions then.

Suggestion 1: Aerothurge apply a stack of 'galvanized' which will do aoe radius magic shield damage (which won't apply to health) on third stack which deal same number as electric discharge. The aoe burst has a radius of 5m-7m and can hit your team as well if in the proximity. The stack lasts five turns. This could proc on multiple enemy at the same time, which would encourage you to make use of your teleport and aether swap and keep an on your melees they don't get caught in the blast.

Suggestion 2: Aerothurge apply a stack of 'tethered' that pulls in every enemy in 10m radius by 1 or 2m towards stacked target when you apply two stack of tethered. it could create a hilarious ping pong effect which would also give a reason to click target a certain enemy without having to burn ap for teleports to set things up.

1) The reason I felt this might work is because currently our best option for stripping magic shield asap is oil/poison ground generator under enemies feet + fire to get the detonation then follow up with choloform tosses. Using aero right off the bat always felt like throwing pabble on enemy magic shield (except broken thunderstorm. what the hell were you thinking larian)

2) You are supposed to be using hydro for defensive buffs/heal/cc and poison/burn to strip shield then tag em with DoT afterward. They feel useful before/after. As it stands aero only see its usuage after magic shield has been stripped which was the reason for the current skill passive we have. If it's magic shield damage only via stack, it could incentivize people to use it as a means to alternately combat bloated magic shield numbers other than elemental detonating combination + flasks toss.

3) The reason I suggested tree stack instead of two is because it is putting your will to strip magic armor with aero through the test. 4 ap generally won't let you cast three lightning dmg spells in one turn. Meaning you'd have to commit a second character's one move or next turn to reap the reward. If you got group cc'ed and nobody can follow up on it then there is always the next next turn. Two stack would just make it feel like flat dmg buff mechanic. It would also the serve the theme of being CC master after magic shield is gone while not really helping with the health damage as per original skill design as long as aoe proc stays magic armor dmg only.

4) Suggestion 2 synergizes perfectly with aero design theme since we are originally meant to use nether swap and teleport to position mob into eating chained skills. It just eliminate the need for the ap burns you'd normally have to go through to use the usual displacement+oil setup we use to maximize our aoe magic dmg output. That 2m displacement might not seem a lot a first, but it could snowball since it is aoe radius proc and you'd only need two characters to work their skills on correct target to create an environment where your dazing bolt doesn't feel like a ap burn for once while doing decent dmg to magic shield to desired target.

Hydrosophist: You are right about healing always taking a back stage mostly even with all the introduction in the vanilla game. It's just something I forgot after learning to use my characters as pack mules for potions which I'd chug without hesitation to get hp back. (Or invis pot if my character on verge of death also saw fit to eat decay) I think the main problem is the fact that aoe healings make me feel like the restoration/healing ritual/steam/hybrid heal spells feel irrelevant rather than aoe passive healing being op. (although living armor still presents some problem.) So here is my suggestion

Suggestion 1: Using any hydrosophist skillsl tag allies within 15m with a stack of 'mercy' which expires after two turns. Each stack of mercy heals equivalanet to half of what restoration spell heals when the stack expires. The higher the stack, the higher the heal burst if you choose not to use hydro spell at all in the next turn two turns in a row. The stack cap would have to be.. like x3 or x5 I guess. This would mean that your existing hydro spells will feel relevant.

Suggestion 2: Using hydrosophist heal spells (not any hydro spells like the above suggestion, heal only) and recovery that results from it provides 'refreshed' stack that last for 5 turns. At third or fifth stack it'll apply rested status along with heal equivalent to first aid. Could also make it interesting by having the caster of heal spell get blessed when he/she manages to pull off the full stack. I always felt odd that the only way to get rested is to either use mat right before the fight or use first aid.

1) The reason I suggested another stack mechanic (I'm not some stack obssessed stack worshipper, despite the evidence to the contrary) is because the current hydro makes me feel like I'm driving a pack of raging rhinos with headbands on their heads saying "screw yo magic". This becomes apparent if you try wearing magic shield heavy mage gears on all characters with fortify + bone armor on with 3 or 5 hydro and living armor.

2) The delay + massive heal burst from suggestion 1 or harder stack + rested/blessed reward from suggestion 2 would give more tactical depth to it. By letting players choose when or where to utilize the added benefit of using base skills which fall in line with heal theme.

3) Despite both of these suggestions I still think what you have for current hydro is such a cool concept. I just felt somewhat sad that the default skills are sort of out of commision as a result of overapplicability of current healing power. So I tried to come up with ideas that possibly wouldn't put living armor talent into a hyperdrive all the time. There is no way to know for sure without testing of course.

Endurance: One thing I forgot to mention in the original post now that I think about it is the dynamic or all resist pot, or even specific resist pot if you know which mob you are up against. By arx I'm usually swimming in 50% resist pots which is why I was not sure about 1% resist per endurance as opposed to 0.5% per. The only thing that prevents me from stocking over 50% resist pots is resource constraints I'd have on clean karma runs (thievery x). I'm not really sure what the balance would be if players were allowed to go over 100 resist every battle by investing in pots and endurance at the same time. Just throwing a caution for a possible scenario.

Suggestion 1: Some sort of stat cap rewards. For example at 20 endurance you'd be permanently tagged with the skill 'death wish' which would mean you'd actually have a reason to take damage to health for a change. I never use this skill while playing normally because my reaction to a character with 10% remaining health isn't "yay more damage" but more in line of "Oh shi-". This would reward players for going high hp setup.

Suggestion 2: Stat cap rewards 2. At 30 or 40 endurance, you'd have a talent or innate called 'avatar form' which is as following. Whenever you take damage to health (not armor or magic s), you'd trigger 'avatar' which gives you 50% physical dmg reduction + 20% all resists + immune to knockdown (just knockdown, as I feel any other cc feels fair) for two turns. This form would have delay of 10 turns to prevent self dmg abuse (?) or tactic depending on how you look at it.

1) While all resists per point is tempting, all resist pot undeniably reduce the difficulty of some of the tougher fights. I felt as if it had the potential to aggreviate the problem. Since the cap reward is at 20 30/40 it'd let people have fun in the early part with damage and respec later if they feel their gears are ready to take on reliable defensive roll mid game.

2) The reason I suggested physical dmg reduction + immune to KD is because once the armor wears off you are as useful as an infant thanks to almost every melee mobs in the game having knockdowns (also looking at you knockdown arrow archers). With this You have the option for the tank/off tank for two turns with the massive health you'd have from endurance investment without being forced to spam fortify, steel, bone armor, and armor pots so your supposed tank won't be useless for the next 3-5 turns.

Perseverance: Despite what i've said, I do think it's in a good place. Any auto damage mechanic such as this should probably never be overtuned unless you want the game to play by itself. Since I haven't tried glass cannon + persev build as you suggested or could think or any applicable build idea atm, I cannot make a decent suggestion, sorry. I do think status reflection has a lot of potential.

I haven't tried specialist at all on melee character yet, but I certainly will! It's apparent from your reply post that you are a deep thinker so I tried to make suggestions that are a little off color to maybe provide route to whatever alternative final form if you ever feel that current stats became inadequate. (It's just nitpicks from me, they are all awesome). Thanks agains for reply/mod and have a good one.

First off, absolutely love this mod. I'm still relatively new to the game but I've always been a fan of RPGs of all kinds. This game I especially love but the stats I did find quesitonable in some ways, while I strove to find mods that might've changed what some of them did, stumbling across your mod was truly a godsend. Thank you very much for this.

I don't have many suggestions pertaining to balance as I'm still in the process of wrapping my head around the game and its mechanics, on top of the fact that Dotori has already voiced the few concerns I had in the first place, I was just wondering what was your view on the Accuracy increase from the Perception stat he pointed out.

@Celestro Perpective of new player would be a great addition to experimental mod imo. More seasoned players tend to pick up one or two tendencies that makes them look at things with color lense on when discussing what could be fun. How much of my opinion were grounded in efficiency or play habit instead of in pursue of fun even I don't know at this point after countless hours of play. Don't be afraid to make any suggestions especially when author seems very open minded and friendly. You never know what we'd get as a result of putting heads together in a melting pot.

Thanks for your replies again! Lots to chew on.

Hydrosophist

There's no easy solution here. While I like the idea of applying stacks and delayed healing as it could become a minigame of its own, requiring more tactical thought, it also means Hydrosophists - healers - can't bring allies back from the brink of death until their turn rolls around. This would lead to a lot of healer's frustration.

I hear you completely on the relative lack of use healing spells are now going to see, but there was a lack of healing spells in the game to begin with - I can only count 6 off the top of my head, excluding Soul Mate and Cryotherapy. (Cryotherapy excluded because it immobilises a character) And Healing Tears is generally regarded as pretty poor.

I still feel like the healing aspect of Hydro is balanced excluding the fact that Living Armor combos off it way too well. I may nerf the healing amount, but it'd be down to 1.5% as opposed to 1% if anything.

That being said, a 1% AoE heal off of skill use and a further 1% heal per point to allies targetted by abilities might see a resurgence of healing skill use. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Endurance

You make a good point about resistance investment, but frankly Endurance isn't the sort of thing most characters can afford to max. The typical character will put max 10 points into Endurance, which in my example would mean +10 resistance to all elements. I'm totally okay with that, even knowing Resist All potions exist, because if you really wanted to in the base game you could stack Constitution sky high and become an invincible wall of health, but have approximately zero fun. I still feel that if players can get that much mileage out of resist all potions with Endurance, they were already pretty tanky to begin with, and that this is more of a problem with Resist All potions than with Endurance.

Endurance pt 2 electric boogaloo

I hear you on knockdown immunity and I'm interested but also don't want to factor much RNG into the attributes. One option would be stat cap bonuses as you say, but maxing Endurance just for knockdown immunity would be a fairly poor choice and I don't want to integrate anything too crazy for endurance. No offense, but the "Avatar form" sounds a bit complex and makes me think more of a class mod than a base attribute.

I'll take these points into consideration and see if I can't think of a better solution moving forward. Come DE, Perseverance's percentage chance to proc will be increased by a lot, so that could help with tanking matters.

I also agree on physical resistance. I say 1% per point would be fun.

The big boi - Aerothurge

I love your suggestions for this but am also somewhat restricted on principle.

The magic armor damage is a clever idea and it almost makes me want to rework leadership to factor something like this in, but my general philosophy is that I want to avoid straight up "damage" effects because it'd lead to a repeat of vanilla:

"oh i want to build a pyromancer but i'll take 2 points in pyrokinetic and 10 in aerothurge to max out my damage"

I suppose lowering air resistance on hit is a possibility. Or possibly returning Aerothurge to its AoE form but adding an intermediary status, a miniature air resistance down "shocked" style effect that becomes Shocked when applied again, which can then naturally become "stunned".

No, that would be too unreliable. Too much reliance on RNG, and too many players going "come on, just apply shocked again ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥".

I quite like your enemy-moving idea but also feel it could be too chaotic - there'd be too much chance for an Aerothurge to accidentally move enemies into better positions or mess up a teammate's plan, which would lead players to feel punished for having points in Aerothurge, which is something I never want.

Another idea I had is making attacks and skills have a 5% chance to shock a random enemy in the current combat. This way Aerothurge keeps its current effect, is more balanced and is also more fun. It'd be difficult to implement, however, and I can't presently think of a method.

Voidtouched

I'm really amused by your Voidtouched comparison. So random. I think I get it...? You're saying it's a mysterious power that you can pick up easily, it comes and goes and you can't wait to see it again? That's great to hear, if so! That's pretty much how I intended it.

Ah, and I forgot to say, I agree on Accuracy. I hadn't even thought of the uses it would see. I always considered accuracy a "dump stat", so I just made it 2%, but now I see the uses of making it 1%. Thanks for letting me know!

I see. You made a lot of excellent points off of random brainstorms I threw in and they provided more insights on what would be fun and acceptable on fundemental level. Here are thoughts more in line of what you stated.

Hydrosophist:

* 1 or 1.5 could work and are definitely addition worthy of permanent feature. The reason I was skeptical about 2 per point was becuase it was way to easy to hit 8 or 10 hydro off of gear with minimal investment of 3 or 5 in stat. Translates into roughly 20 perc healing per action and 4 ap usually see 2 actions if not 3. With the way os 2 handles initiative, eventually you come to a point where the turn goes ally - mob - ally - mob - ally - ally - mob - mob regardless of stat. I just felt that 40-60 perc healing per character didn't give enemy casters any fight chance since my characters get to top off their magic s before every incoming magic dmg.

* 1 percent base aoe healing + 1 percent healing on targeted ally still sounds way too good imo. Since I'm always forming a crossfire in a arc I usually never see more than two of my characters get hit during defensive phase. Three if I'm unlucky but that rarely happens unless enemy boss decided to use tracking aoe. It'll more or less be similar to 2 perc aoe heal except less unintentially useful.

* As for healing skills we barely use like healing tears, this could be a chance to shine some spotlight on them. Let's forget the delay mechanic since like you said since it has potential to frustrate players as they might have to deal with too meticulous of a turn management to reap the reward. However, we could probably expand on the skill proc off of hydro skill stack. We could.. maybe switch it up so that skill we almost never use (I admit, last ime I used healing tear was probably last year. A lot of hybrid spells are too situational) are triggered after certain amount of targeted heal use. This stave off the issue of living armor overproc as well.

Endurance:

* You are right, all resist potion is a bit of ♥♥♥♥ show if I'm being honest. Here is to hoping larian won't impliment it on div os 3 lol. The presence of armor + magic s and their mechanic of preventing most status all but ensured that endurance is a stat where it won't see much use. I feel like it still very much has saving throws in mind more than anything.

* On the subject of endurance cap reward, here are some random ideas that popped into head while reading your posts. I was thinking maybe it's possible to make use of 'can only be used once per battle' system that skills like skin graft currently have. All of the following suggestions would have this limitation.

* Endurance 15: Apply disease/weak to all enemy in 10m when health takes damage (once per battle), Endurance 20: Apply errantic warp to yourself and shakle of pain to nearby enemy when health goes below 66 percent (Once per.. you get the idea) Endurance 25: Apply fortify/frost armor/clear minded(for mental attacks) when health goes below 33 Percent (once..)
Endurance 30: Gordon Ramsay shows up and start yelling at enemy that the chicken is too raw. Enemy dies from shame. It procs when health goes below 3.14 percent.

Aerothurge:

* I guess I'm not quite sure either where to go with this. I just feel like focusing on cc aspect of aero is a bit of overkill given the nature of this skill. So I'll just throw in random ideas again and see if lightning strikes in the right place. (kill me)

* Use of skill gives you a 'static shock' equivalent of your aerothurge. 2 points if you have 2 in aero, 10 points if you have 10 in aero. At 100 points, it resets all cooldown of all your skills with a lightning strike on all enemies in 5m radius. Would synergize with any melee or ranged build this way. It'd take 5 turns of fighting normally and possibly 3-4 if you use nothing but 1 ap skills to proc this, which is not unreasonable since almost all skills have 5-10 cooldowns. This would just offer more fun factor and give freedom in rotation.

* Could try a spell echo mechanic called 'aftershock'. Whenever you use attack or attack skill (no proc per enemy as this applying to aoe skill would be ridiculous) you have 2 percent chance per point to send out a 5m nova that'll lower all resistance by 10 and do tiny lightning damage (for fun factor, so just air dmg without shock). Whenever you proc it you gain a stack of 'eye of storm' which would mean that the next 'after shock' will have 10m nova that'll lower resistance by 20. I think the max should probably be 15m nova with resistance debuff of 30 since more than that might start to intrude on other skill's territory. Seeing as how we have skills like flay skin which outright destroys resistance I don't think 30 debuff is too much a killer as aoe debuff given how hard it is to proc it to that point.

* You gain a aspect of 'SPARKMASTER 5000'. Whenever you are knocked down or stunned, you have 5 percent chance per point to gain a skill called 'SPARKMASTER 5000'. This skill costs 4 ap and if you use this skill you cannot attack or move for that turn. You also take double damage while channeling. At the start of next turn you release chain lightning that target both enemies and allies that'll do magic shield damage equal to your health. You also gain 50% air resist and air damage on your attacks for 2 turns. Is this balanced? I've no clue lol. It does however open up the possibitliy of all in endurance kamikaze style aeromancer if you so choose to.

Now, you might assume that I came up with these ideas while being high on drugs, but I assure you that I came up with them while chewing on beef jerky. I still tried to ground them somewhat in os 2 lore and keep them in line of being viable without making other skills pointless. Thanks for reading and good luck! Keep up the divine's work.

@Dotori: I suppose that's true! Much appreciated. I've a few ideas but not certainly on how plausible they are to implement.

Hydrosophist: Always a pain balancing healing in games it seems haha. In any case, I have noticed the lack of healing spells in the game so I understand the reason behind the AoE implementation for healing spells. I'm not entirely certain if 2% is too much on its from what I've observed so far in the game, though I can almost see the concern of healing spells not being used much when this constant AoE healing is going on. I do have to ask, is it 2% per point of the character's maximum Vitality? It wasn't really clear but one suggestion would be whether it's possible to scale the healing of non-healing Hydro spells to something like the character's current Vitality while actual Healing spells heal them based off maximum Vitality?

Alternatively, while I do think 1.5% might be something to try if it comes down to that, what about something like a 1% heal per point on top of an AoE HoT called Soothe or Refresh that heals 1% per point for one turn? Even if you use multiple Hydro spells in one turn, the status will only keep refreshing itself to the maximum one turn. Or perhaps the status can stack. Either way, it would be a delayed heal instead of something that's upfront. Seemed like it might be a decent medium between the 2% vs 1.5% vs 1%. Not sure how doable that is but a splash heal from using Hydro spell is a great idea no matter how you slice it.

Aerothurge: I thought of a similar idea wherein an intermediary status effect like Static can build up into Shocked with repeated applications. It could be like a small AoE that inflicts Static to nearby characters, both allies and enemy alike since it's often advised to steer clear of targets of Aero spells. However, only the primary target(s) can be afflicted with Shocked from Static, so its not automatically crappy for a close range type to get a little close. There is a certain unreliablility of the ultimately Shocked and Stunned statuses coming up from this passive effect but doesn't the same apply to most of the abilities?

Not certain of anything else. I'm getting the idea of a small amount of the damage you're dealing getting through Armor, since electricity can really bypass stuff you're wearing and strong winds tossing you around still hurts a bit but that feels iffy. Not necessarily increasing damage but does become useless once armor is gone unless something else would tie into that. Or perhaps each use of a Aero spell could generate a sort of reverse Evasion Aura that lowers the evasion, movement speed and/or accuracy of enemies in close proximity for a turn. Almost wished Retribution didn't have its effect since I could also see a damage reflection thing going on for wind. Increased range? Not sure.

Endurance: Not much to say for Endurance. Resistance increases across the board seems pretty great to add something extra to the stat without necessarily overloading it.

On the aerothurge department, why not focus on the *wind* aspect of it instead of the *lightning*?
Aerothurge seems to have a second role of being able to counter terrain effects (cleaning terrain and giving immunity). It would be interesting to see the school focusing more on levitation (setting floating either on the caster or on the targets), cleaning terrain, absorbing terrain (for example absorb electrified terrain) and so on. I would invest points on a school that gives me a tactical edge and more interaction rather than just an offensive boost.

You mean like mini tornado? That'd be interesting but most of the time I find myself leaving any elemental ground on to proc elementalist on my mage and hybrids. Only time I'd find that appealing enough to spec my build for it would be the infamous oil field of hell but that's just one exception. Absorbing terrain to heal has been experimented in other mods but honestly that felt like intruding on hydro territory. Immunity off of ground would just throw game out of balance since most mobs spawn with environment advantage they are meant to make use of.

Floating sounds really interesting though. Lifting undead off of poison, fire immune ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ off of necrofire, or my teammate off of oil etc etc. It'd be like a forced 'set floating' then? Sounds neat. Hell, the idea of wind itself sounds neat too. Since we do have air based offense abilities like vacuum and status like suffocate, maybe wind concept can expand on that. Not sure how you would approach that without becoming an skill mod though.

Well that's the thing, the utility diminishes if you plan on standing on top of elements, yet there are two schools that care about transforming safe terrain into dangerous terrain, that is aerothurge and pyrokinetic, and pyro tends to deal with this by really not caring much about being burning, but what about aero and being shocked or stunned? it doesn't really care much about that other than natural resistance, but imagine if by going through that school you become able to keep the terrain you're standing on clean, by that effect and also by absorbing electricity (not the same thing that hydro does, you are just taking the charge out of it).
I don't know to which extent this can be done, I don't know if you can "push terrain aside" instead of just cleaning it, it could be a neat effect, being able to push terrain effects away from you, and very "wind-like" too.
How do I envision this regarding stats and not skills per se? Well, it could be done in many ways, for example like this:
- When you step on charged terrain (electrified water, blood or steam cloud) you absorb the electricity and get "floating". You could get another scalable effect through this, like bonus magic armor or health.
- When you cast aero spells you could "release" wind around you and clean the terrain on your feet or push it away, the distance it is pushed could be scalable in relation to the points on aero.

It could be interesting as well to see extra effects on magic schools at level 10, but that's another topic.
edit: I realize that what I envision could also be a talent regarding aerothurge, just like hydro and pyro have them.

ok im not going to post a paragraph and i may be wrong but im mixing this mod with the void knight mod in the vanilla edition of the game the void knight is high mobility assassin that deals high dmg at the cost of being really sqwishy, because this mod allows for the building of armor and dmg at the same time it feels like my sqwish assassin now is a tanky insane godly mess. mix that with my athero mage and i literally end up one shotting everything i come accross. i know you mod has "beware this makes the game harder" everywhere but honestly i feel like it makes the game hella easier gaining dmg and health/armor at the same time creates a broken mess.