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r0ach

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Additional Skill Synergy and Strategy Redux

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The largest and most balanced spell expansion and skill add-on for Divinity 2.  The original creator of Additional Skill Synergy and Strategy stopped working on it after release, so I forked it, added a lot of new content, then removed the redundant or unbalanced skills so there's nothing overpowered and it generally all feels like it belongs in the vanilla version of the game.

If you were looking for something similar to epic encounters from DOS1, this is probably the closest thing there is.  I started this fork after trying numerous class mods and noticing they were either overpowered, underpowered, or just added a bunch of redundant spells that cluttered up the game for no reason.  The class mods are generally not a good idea because it just makes one or two skill trees all lopsided and it's obvious a monolithic pak is required that addresses every skill tree.

I would recommend using only this mod and no others with it (besides maybe ones like the walkspeed adjustment mod or crafting mod) for the best game experience.


Integrated mods:
-------------------------

1) Additional Skill Synergy & Strategy Redux:  adds several new useful abilities to each skill tree.  The majority of these are fairly well balanced and I've either removed or adjusted problematic ones such as cursed cloak and cursed weapon.

2) Fort Joy Respec Mirror

3) Some settings used by the "No Psychic Enemies mod".  I have not changed any named NPCs, but common grunt NPCs and such will no longer automatically know you have things like glass cannon.


Difficulty:
------------- 

There are four versions of this mod.  Larian originally balanced each difficulty level in a poor manner by just applying things like a flat 50% enemy armor, HP, and damage bonus to create tactician mode.  All this does is turn every enemy in the game whether it's a mage or a warrior into a tank and makes no sense.  It also makes mixed damage parties less viable like 2 mages and 2 melee where you feel like you have to use the dual armor damage mod to fix it. 

This is why I have created each difficulty mode by not altering enemy armor at all.  This allows mixed party compositions, allows crowd control mages to actually function, and overall feels way more similar to DOS1 and similar RPG games.

- Easy mode:  +0% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor, +0% enemy HP
- Standard old school classic RPG difficulty:  +30% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor, +25% enemy HP
- Tactician as it should have been:  +50% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor, +50% enemy HP
- Hardest mode (similar to original tactician mode):  +50% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor, +70% enemy HP

There are 4 separate files in the .zip for whichever difficulty version you choose.  It's applied to both classic and tactician mode.  If you change from a low HP enemy version to a high HP version, enemy health will not propagate the entire bar to the new level until you enter a new area, so always start with the hardest mode you're comfortable with first then change to lower difficulty if necessary.  If it's your 2nd playthrough or you've already played epic encounters for the first Divinity, you might want to try the harder 50%, 0%, 50% version then change to the standard version if you can't win fights like Radeka or the drill worm.


Stat changes:
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1) Con:  Increased con gains per point from 7% to 9%.  The payoff for investing in con was not high enough compared to damage attributes.  This change affects both players and NPCs.

2) Necromancy:  Lifesteal changed from 10% per point invested to 6%.  Unbalanced for numerous builds to get enormous lifesteal with barely any investment, and necro heals were too high to even use skills that require low hp.

3) 2h Spears:  scale with strength instead of finesse so they aren't useless items you sell to vendor


Necromancy
-------------------

*NEW* DOT spell:  Boil Blood - Appears on vendors at level 4.  Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Pyromancy. 

*NEW* touch range damage spell:  Festering Hand - Appears on vendors at level 4.  Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Geomancy.  The spell applies a strong touch range DOT called Pox.

*NEW* level 2 Necromancy summon Skeleton Warrior:  acts as a small progression/side option from bloated corpse.  It's similar to the witchcraft undead decapitator summons from DOS1, uses a 2hander, has attack of opportunity, a little less hp than bloated corpse, but does more autoattack damage.  Has crippling blow skill.  Is not overpowered like summons from other mods.

*NEW* level 2 Necromancy spell - Harvest:  a short range, cone lifesteal spell.  It's not that high damage so if there's only one enemy inside it's effect it will heal less than mosquito swarm, but if there's two enemies in range it will heal for a bit more.  It also does piercing damage instead of physical and multi-classes well with deathknight melee builds, pure int necro builds, or other elemental schools minoring in necro.

*NEW* level 2 Necromancy spell - Horrific Scream:  3 radius PBAE 0.90 multiplier, physical damage, 2AP, 4 cooldown.  Causes enemies facing towards you to flee in fear.  Does not work on enemies not facing towards you.

*NEW* Necromancy spell Consume Corpse - Now a player usable spell.  Changed from 2 AP to 1 AP, damage buff lowered from 30% to 20%.  I tried 10% in the past, but bodies are a resource for necromancers to use for things like explode corpse or for summons, and around 20% is what's needed to balance out the pros and cons of using the body for a summon vs eating it.   

- Mosquito swarm:  lowered cooldown from 4 to 3 to make up for necromancy lifesteal reduction, lack of early necro dmg spells, and to shift lifesteal to a more active instead of passive component

- Bone Break raised from 0.8 to 0.9 multiplier so it's not a complete waste of time if the enemy doesn't move

- Sleep Miasma, Dream Eater, and plague grenade removed from mod.  Things like plague grenade were kind of half baked spells with questionable effects and animation.  No longer needed with new spells. 


Pyromancy
-----------------

*NEW* level 2 spell Explode - 2 AP cost, 1.10 multiplier, 13m range.  Causes burning 3 rounds whereas most burns are 2, has a 2m explode radius but is not ground targetable and you must directly target an enemy. Can be tricky to not cause friendly fire.

*NEW* level 2 spell Flame Sphere - 10m range.  Summon a 2 radius flame sphere on the battlefield that lasts for 2 ticks, damaging anyone inside and lowering their fire resist by -10% that stacks with other fire debuffs.  It also sets fire to anyone standing inside the area of the sphere's creation.

Anyone inside the sphere is also immune to wet, chilled, or frozen and has their water resist increased by 20%, so it might be able to be used in strange ways defensively.

-Fireball:  This skill's damage radius was enormous making it very unwieldly to use, causing too much friendly fire problems, and also feeling pretty weak compared to it's D&D style counterparts.  To fix these problems:

* damage radius lowered from 3 to 2
* cooldown lowered from 4 to 3, 
* raised range from 13m to 15m
* raised AP cost from 2 to 3
* raised multiplier from 1 to 1.4, which is mostly comparable to other 3AP damage spells like hail storm that debuff their own damage type except you get the effect of burning for additional damage instead of frozen CC, so it's overall balanced well

- Flaming Daggers:  Overall, I find the mechanic of having to click 3 times to use this ability annoying, making gameplay too tedious, so I converted it to a single projectile.  The damage was also set to scale terribly for this skill making it fall off too quickly.  Since a throwing dagger tends to be shorter range, I decreased it's range from 13m to 12m while upping the multiplier from 0.25 x 3 to 1.0 x 1.  You can use the new spell Infernal Sacrifce to create a fire surface instead of casting the dagger on yourself for elemental affinity.

- Fire spell melt ground small increase from 1.0 to 1.1 multiplier to prevent mage CC from lagging behind the archer version

- Fire Spell Infernal Sacrifice has been reworked.  Self-damage is lower, no longer gives fire immunity, but gives 10% damage boost for 2 rounds while creating fire surface at feet.


Geomancy
-----------------

*NEW* level 1 earth spell Midnight Oil - creates oil surface for 1 AP

*NEW* level 2 earth spell Earth Shard:  2 AP 0.95 multiplier 13m range 25% chance to petrify.

*NEW* level 2 earth spell Poison Ball:  0.90 multiplier 2ap 2m explode radius 

*NEW* level 3 earth spell summon Poison Ooze:  high hp tank, so-so damage.  Costs 3 ap to summon and only lasts 4 rounds with 8 round cooldown but can be summoned anytime.  The skeleton warrior summon added in necromancy costs less AP, does more damage, but requires a corpse.

- Earthquake knockdown is now affected by magic resist instead of physical resist

- Impalement:  no longer creates oil surface and instead causes bleeding.  Resist check for bleed is also changed to magic resist for this particular spell.

- Sandman Shift changed from 1 AP to 2 AP and now uses your weapon damage in the formula, making it useful for both mages and melee.  Spell reqs changed from Geomancy 1 to 2.  The new spell won't appear on vendors until level 4 now.  The ability can backstab if the enemy is facing away from you when cast, but won't backstab if they're facing towards you.  Tightened up radius upon porting as well.

- Petrifying touch multiplier raised from 0.75 to 1.05

- Reworked Excorcist Spray and renamed to Toxic Spray.  The constitution and damage debuff was intruding on necromancer plague territory.  Spell changed from a wide cone that diseases to a narrow 7m cone with 1.0 multiplier that poisons and has a slow that bypasses magic resist like oil.  The graphic now looks vastly better as well.


Aero
-------

*NEW* level 2 air spell Lightning ball added, 0.9 multiplier, 2 AP 

*NEW* level 2 air spell electric ray added (this is not the same overpowered spell seen in a few other mods), a beam spell that goes in a straight line, 1.35 multiplier, 3 AP cost

*NEW* level 3 air spell translocate - self teleport 2 AP 

- Electric discharge (lightning bolt) damage multiplier bumped slightly from .9 to .95 to keep up with early game strategies of spamming fire and poison all over the landscape


Hydro
----------

*NEW* level 1 water spell: water torrent - 2 AP, 1.0 multiplier causes wet 3 turn cooldown

*NEW* level 2 water spell - Ice Spear:  2 AP, 0.90 multiplier, 13m range, 3 cooldown.  Can pierce through multiple targets.  It will pierce the main target and hit up to 2 other targets behind the main one if they're lined up similar to bowling pins.  Maximum seek radius of second target is 8m or less away from the first.  Always target the closest enemy with the spell and not the furthest away one if you want it to work. 

*NEW* level 1 water spell: ice shard - 2 AP, has a small 1m explode radius so it can hit multiple bunched up targets like Fossil Strike

- Added a resurrection spell to water magic - 4AP cost, 5 skill in water required.  It's stocked on vendors or you can make it by combining 1 restoration skillbook and 1 resurrect scroll

- Hail Strike is now 4 projectiles instead of 3 with 4 x 0.32 multiplier.

- Ice Fan is 3 x 0.43 multiplier

- Global Cooling multiplier raised from 0.3 to 0.45 to make it worth putting on the spell bar at all


Warfare
------------- 

*NEW* Level 1 melee skill:  Quick Slash

*NEW* Level 2 melee skill:  Heavy attack -  2ap 1.10 multiplier and causes knockdown.  Knockdown is removed from battlestomp and this is the new go to crowd control ability for warriors.
- All-in multiplier changed from 1.25 to 1.40 to make it worth using instead of just saving the AP for auto attacks

- Battering ram:  lowered range from 12m to 11m and raised damage from 50% to 60% multiplier

- Battlestomp:  cone angle changed to 15 degrees, raised damage to 0.75 multiplier, and knockdown removed from spell component (knockdown is now located on the new skill heavy attack above.)

For further explanation of the need for changes to shield bash and battle stomp:  https://pastebin.com/jgHfWR2Z




Scoundrel
---------------- 

*NEW* - level 2 scoundrel spell levitate 2 AP

- Sneak AP cost changed from 4 to 2


Melee Resist changes:
---------------------------------

Melee orientated status debuffs added:

- Status Knocked down:  -10% physical resist
- Status Blind:         -10% physical resist
- Status Disarmed:      -10% physical resist
- Status Sleeping:      -15% physical resist


Elemental Resist Changes
---------------------------------------

Small changes in resist debuffs to better distribute them and thematically make more sense.  Most debuffs also debuff a little harder than before because a lot of NPC resists are set unreasonably high against magic but not physical:

- Warm:       -10% fire, +10% water, +5% air
- Burning:    -20% fire, +20% water, +10% air
- Necrofire:  -20% fire, +20% water, +10% air
- Shocked:    -15% air,  +15% earth
- Stunned:    -15% air,  +15% earth
- Wet:        -20% air,  -10% water, +10% fire
- Chilled:    -10% air,  -15% water, +10% fire, +10% poison
- Frozen:     -20% water, +20% fire, +20% poison
- Poisoned:   -15% poison
- Petrified:  -20% earth, +20% fire, +20% air, +20% poison


Surface changes:
-------------------------

Hazardous surfaces cause a little more damage to step on them.  It was a bit too easy to ignore damage surfaces before.  A lot of people just stand in them not even caring.  In terms of thematic ranking for level of unpleasantness, I would rank them as:  

necrofire > fire > cloud poison > static cursed > static > ooze 

They have all been adjusted accordingly to those parameters:

- Necrofire surface multiplier changed from .25 to .33
- Fire surface multiplier changed from .17 to .25
- Cloud poison multiplier changed from .17 to .24
- Static cursed multiplier changed from .15 to .22
- Static multiplier changed from .10 to .20
- Ooze multiplier remains the same at .17
- The actual status effect damage of burning, poisoned, and such remains unchanged


Recommended Mods to be used with this one:
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Fast Run Speed - Just a QOL change. Default run speed is set excruciatingly slow in the vanilla game.  This just makes it feel normal and doesn't change balance.

https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/18

Crafting Overhaul - Adds more depth and complexity to the crafting system

https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/87