Divinity: Original Sin 2’s brilliant armor system is one of a kind in RPGs, and I’m bummed we’ll apparently never see it again

I’m mourning a friend today, and what’s more, my friend’s memory is being slandered. Not only will Divinity not carry forward the unique armor system Larian crafted for Divinity: Original Sin 2, my coworkers keep bashing it. PCG guides writer Rory Norris called it “broken” in giant letters on our front page.

I forget what PCG news writer Morgan Park said to me exactly during our Friday meeting, but it was something like D:OS2’s armor system sucks, I’m stupid for liking it, and I’m a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt, and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt.

There is nothing out there like D:OS2’s armor system. It lends the game a combat rhythm that is completely unique among CRPGs, and I was thrilled at the prospect of Larian returning to it with fresh eyes and a Baldur’s Gate 3’s worth of design experience. The saving grace here is the possibility of something new and even better, but I can’t let the moment pass without sticking up for my fav.

Far out, man

Crowd control⁠—stuns, knockdowns, anything that hampers an enemy or player instead of directly damaging them⁠—is a key part of RPG combat, but it’s almost always based on a certain amount of random chance, like Dungeons & Dragons’ D20 saving throws. It works well enough as a genre default, but D:OS2 is the only CRPG I’ve played that went back to the drawing board to replace this core assumption with something else entirely.

In D:OS2, every character and enemy has physical and magic armor bars over their health bars. The physical is reduced by weapon damage and abilities centered on those weapons, like the warrior skill tree. The magic armor protects against spell and elemental effects.

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Once an armor bar is depleted, the corresponding attacks then affect the base health bar. The curve ball is that crowd control effects do not work until the relevant armor has been depleted, but once a character’s armor is gone, those crowd control abilities have a 100% success rate. Take the warrior charge attack Battering Ram: When an enemy’s physical armor is up, it’s just a way to deal damage and reposition your character, but when that armor is gone, Battering Ram will knock over an enemy every time you use it.

This means that every character, even ones you don’t usually associate with battlefield control like rogues and warriors, is an important vector for both damage and crowd control. You have to leave certain assumptions at the door when playing: There’s no need for a traditional tank or healer, because enemies can just ignore your tank (especially with all the mobility powers like teleportation), and health just isn’t as important as armor. The few armor restoration abilities in the game are part of skill trees with ample offensive options.

Every character has to pull triple duty as a tank, DPS, and controller, with build differences coming in the form of which weapons, armor, and skill trees a given character takes advantage of⁠—you don’t want two archers squabbling over the best bows, for example. It all results in a highly aggressive form of turn based tactics where you’re racing to strip enemy defenses and lock down priority targets before they can do the same to you.

Bigger and better

Original Sin 2’s system has weaknesses, but no more than the genre-standard, random chance-based alternative. I’ve always felt that D:OS2’s few missteps lie elsewhere, like its randomly generated, leveled loot or dearth of non-combat questing. One of Rory’s main complaints that I do get regards party composition: You’re incentivized to go all elemental or all physical, and the mixed-damage party from my first playthrough struggled in the endgame.

But even this, I’d argue, is less of a weakness and more of a difference. There’s a ton of character build variety even within the elemental/physical silos, and D:OS2 is no more restrictive with what constitutes a well-built, viable character than any other RPG, particularly as you go lower in difficulty. On my last playthrough, I ran with an all-physical party consisting of a dual daggers rogue, two hand warrior, archer, and summoner.

When I return to the game for yet another cheeky replay, I was eyeing an elemental party⁠—I’m particularly excited by some builds I’ve seen for a melee-focused battlemage who pairs elemental staves with warrior abilities. It’s a great system, but I’m more broken up by my colleagues’ slander than Larian not revisiting it for Divinity. This is a studio I trust to come up with something equally inventive.

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