Utility and non-combat talents/perks

[Lamppost in Winter]

While we're having it out in the other Talent thread about Weapon Styles and Fighter passives, I wanted to talk about utility and non-combat talents.

 

Aside from missing my Field Triage and elemental scions, I feel there's some untapped potential for non-combat or combat-adjacent talents, especially when looking at the Talents/Perks of lists of your Divinity: Original Sins or Fallouts. For example, something that helps with difficult terrain, or something like a night vision perk that adds Per during night (and perhaps subtracts it during the day). 

 

Some of the non-combat gameplay, like Stealth, resting and world map exploration, seems to have been expanded enough that there could conceivably be some purchasable perks to improve them.

 

The implementation of the active Skills (Arcana, Stealth, etc.) also seems to be rather linear; they do one thing and putting points in it makes it better. I think 1-2 talents specific to each active Skill that adds some mechanical benefit that isn't just a straight number boost would be enough to add some interest to investing in skills without getting too bloated. For example, Second Wind applying an Inspiration, or being able to move silently in stealth.

 

Perks for the passive skills like Bluff or Surivival in certain situations might also be interesting.

 

The problems I can forsee are some of these being no-brainers or getting bloated with Talents. I would suggest getting access to them at roughly the same rate as Proficiencies, perhaps even competing for the same resource (though I know Obisidian seems to be going in the direction of keeping non-combat and combat levelling separate). With 20 levels and only getting a Talent every 4 levels, I don't feel there would be significant bloat.

 

TL;DR: non-combat or combat-adjacent utility talents/perks are Cool and Good and I'd like to see them implemented