Best way to distrubute skills

[rman88]

what skills would you say are needed on all charcters. and what skills would you say are needed on only 1 party member? trying to get a good balance as my barb has 2 athletics 1 survial and 2 lore. but i am not sure if this is best for him starting out.

[Armanz]

You want 1 character with high mechanics to open locks and find and disable traps and secret doors/items.
You want high lore on characters that you want to use scrolls with.
You want high athletics on your tanky characters such as barbarians, paladins & fighters.
You want 1 rank of survival on all characters for that damage reduction bonus while camping in the wilderness.
You want high stealth on 1 character to scout ahead and/or medium/high stealth on all/several characters if you want to scout ahead with more members or even your entire party.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Mechanics : Only a single character needs this to find hidden things, disarm traps, open locks. Especially if it's not a Rogue, you need to spend all skill points into this, or else you depend on bonuses from resting, items and scrolls too much.

Survival : The most essential skill for everyone involved in fighting. The resting bonuses are just too good. The bonus increases for rank 7-12, and 13-.

Stealth : Not useful. The only stealing mission in the game can be done with low Stealth. Scouting mode also works without Stealth skill. If you absolutely want to sneak past enemies often, you would need quite some points in this skill with every companion.

Lore : Are casters in your party? Then let them cast their known spells instead of using scrolls. You don't need to exploit Paralyze scrolls when fighting against some dragons, for example. Else the Lore skill is a matter of taste. A couple of good scrolls require Lore 8, at least. Look them up in the crafting menu. Plan ahead. Scrolls you cannot create yourself are rare and less interesting.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Mechanics : Only a single character needs this to find hidden things, disarm traps, open locks. Especially if it's not a Rogue, you need to spend all skill points into this, or else you depend on bonuses from resting, items and scrolls too much.

Survival : The most essential skill for everyone involved in fighting. The resting bonuses are just too good. The bonus increases for rank 7-12, and 13-.

Stealth : Not useful. The only stealing mission in the game can be done with low Stealth. Scouting mode also works without Stealth skill. If you absolutely want to sneak past enemies often, you would need quite some points in this skill with every companion.

Lore : Are casters in your party? Then let them cast their known spells instead of using scrolls. You don't need to exploit Paralyze scrolls when fighting against some dragons, for example. Else the Lore skill is a matter of taste. A couple of good scrolls require Lore 8, at least. Look them up in the crafting menu. Plan ahead. Scrolls you cannot create yourself are rare and less interesting.

This advice is spot-on.

I'd add one thing about Lore: It's a fair skill to take for your main character if you enjoy certain dialog options. I took it on my Paladin main and enjoyed the results in dialogs. But my Cipher main does all the Mechanics stuff, so I haven't been able to take it on that character.

[smilehigh]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Mechanics : Only a single character needs this to find hidden things, disarm traps, open locks. Especially if it's not a Rogue, you need to spend all skill points into this, or else you depend on bonuses from resting, items and scrolls too much.

Survival : The most essential skill for everyone involved in fighting. The resting bonuses are just too good. The bonus increases for rank 7-12, and 13-.

Stealth : Not useful. The only stealing mission in the game can be done with low Stealth. Scouting mode also works without Stealth skill. If you absolutely want to sneak past enemies often, you would need quite some points in this skill with every companion.

Lore : Are casters in your party? Then let them cast their known spells instead of using scrolls. You don't need to exploit Paralyze scrolls when fighting against some dragons, for example. Else the Lore skill is a matter of taste. A couple of good scrolls require Lore 8, at least. Look them up in the crafting menu. Plan ahead. Scrolls you cannot create yourself are rare and less interesting.

I mostly agree with D'amarr.

For Mechanics - pick one character with inherent mechanics bonus and put all available points in this skill with each level-up. You can use lockpicks to open higher-level locks, but they won't help you against high level traps. You can boost mechanics through item bonuses, resting bonuses and rite scrolls - but it's more convenient to have a dedicated specialist at all times.

For Survival - decide which bonus is more important to you. +1 damage reduction is negligeble. Usually the best bonuses are +Accuracy against enemy type or +Damage against flanked targets at skill levels 4 and 6 respectively. So either take 4/8 points or 6/12 points. Personally I prefer the Accuracy boost (very helpful against dragons) but you have to prepare ahead so it requires a bit of metaknowledge.

Athletics are nice for healing early in the game. But raising this skill has diminishing returns. I sometimes take 5 points in it in the beginning to have a quick healing option always handy. It is also quite often checked in scripted interactions.

A certain high Stealth check may be required for a peaceful sneaky option in one of the major quests in White March. Otherwise Stealth is completely optional unless you are soloing.

Lore: while it is true that your casters should do the casting sometimes in boss battles it is useful to be able to cast as many buffing spells as possible on your party (while it is still grouped together and not spread out) in a very short period of time. So while your priest casts a higher level buffing spell your fighter may cast another buffing spell from a scroll. Also if your priest or paladin fall in battle you might need to use a scroll to revive them. It depends on how well you play obviously.

[rman88]

ok its,, been a while but i cannot recall if chat skillchecks only count for the party leader skills or everyones.

[smilehigh]

Dialogue checks only use the party leader's stats.

Scripted interactions on the other hand often give you an opportunity to choose another party member.

[rman88]

so would it be better for the main chracter to be kinda jack of all trades? well when it comes to skills

[smilehigh]

"Better" compared to what? Some people prefer minmaxed combat builds and don't much care about dialogue. Other people prefer to roleplay a particular character and accept that not all dialogue options will be available to him. Yet others like to have as much dialogue options as possible in a single playthrough and plan their character accordingly from the very beginning.

Many dialogue options that involve main character's skills are purely cosmetic. Some skills are almost never used in dialogue (Stealth). On rare occasions your skills may influence the outcome of a quest. The skills that are used more frequently are lore and survival (you might need mechanics for Anymancy Hearings but it is totally not necessary as there are other options to get the desired result).

Bear in mind that you can also significantly raise skills through resting bonuses, item bonuses and "rites" (a rare type of consumable scrolls) when you really want to pass a check.

[rman88]

Welp, i am not going for a min max build. Thou skills don't seem to play such a massive role in the builds i have looked up. Hell most builds don't even talk about skills at all. as really they play more of a minor role when you think about it.

But on my current build, i have 14 10 14 14 16 10. a more normal build for a barbarain without min maxing like i used to do. and in general it gives a good amount of speach checks i can pass without going to crazy.

That said, when it comes to my mian charcter. i am just going to level survival, athletics, and lore. keeping them at about even so when it comes to those skill checks. i can easily make it with my main guy.

now for the rest, 1 guy will take the role of my mechanics guy. the others will more or less either take athletics, survial, or survial, depending on the class.

[smilehigh]

Sounds like a plan.

(I would not raise Athletics too high though. As I said before it does not scale too well with higher character levels and is mostly useful in the beginning of the game. There is no point in raising it higher than 4-5. AFAIK high Athletics score is not required for dialogue purposes either (while you may encounter pretty high Lore checks for example).

And I'd still recommend raising Lore to at least 2 for one of your melee chars - so that he can use the Scroll of Prayer Against Fear and let your priest cast other important spells in the meantime. (Fear is one of the worst debuffs that can be used against your party as the "Terrified" affliction lowers your accuracy by -20 (among other things) and dragons have Fear Auras that constantly hit you with this effect).

Edit: though if you play barbarian and are planning to have high lore anyway that should be enough for scrolls too.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by rman88:

Welp, i am not going for a min max build. Thou skills don't seem to play such a massive role in the builds i have looked up. Hell most builds don't even talk about skills at all. as really they play more of a minor role when you think about it.

Most build guides are overrated and only examine retraining a level 16 character, using the best items in the game and bragging about it. Hardly any build guide author plays from level 1 onwards to test a build in the complete game.

Skills, especially Survival, are very good. You can learn up to three levels of Survival, with each level increasing the bonuses. Compared with, you can skip Athletics if you use potions instead and don't wait too long before drinking them.

Originally posted by rman88:

But on my current build, i have 14 10 14 14 16 10. a more normal build for a barbarain without min maxing like i used to do. and in general it gives a good amount of speach checks i can pass without going to crazy.

Attributes alone don't make "a build". Talents and equipment are much more important. With RES 10 you're missing tons of Resolve checks during conversation. The most important checks require attributes of 16-18. Some special ones even require RES/INT/PER at 19-20.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Originally posted by rman88:

Welp, i am not going for a min max build. Thou skills don't seem to play such a massive role in the builds i have looked up. Hell most builds don't even talk about skills at all. as really they play more of a minor role when you think about it.

Most build guides are overrated and only examine retraining a level 16 character, using the best items in the game and bragging about it. Hardly any build guide author plays from level 1 onwards to test a build in the complete game.

I take exception to that remark!

[Chigen Atomic]

It's good to have a few points on Athletics due to skill checks every now and again. That way your casters aren't going to eat ♥♥♥♥ during checks.

[rman88]

well, hear is how i plan on running it. as right now i have my group together of a barb, fighter, druid, palladin, sorc and preist.

Barb aka my guy is going to be leveling up survial lore and atheletics. in general so i can meat most skill skil checks in diplomatic.

my preist or my sorc is going to be my mechanics guy. i havn't decided which thou i think i will pick the one that has the best base lore. just encase i want to use scrolls. other then that i plan on leveling up atheltics to 5 and survival.

rest are just going to be athletics 5 then max out survial. i don't use scrolls as much as i should. and i am running with a spellcaster heavy team. so i have good natural versatility considering my sorc will be hybrid dps cc. preist will do its best to keep everyone alive. while the druid will blow everything up.

meanwhile my figher and palladin will act as a sheild for my barbarian. which i plan on making him a life stealing beast that will rapadily cleave down an entire army while his strogmen protect his flanks.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by rman88:

Barb aka my guy is going to be leveling up survial lore and atheletics. in general so i can meat most skill skil checks in diplomatic.

Don't overthink it. You're making the planning phase much more complicated than it is. Within the game, you really don't depend on conversation checks that much - unless you are meta-gaming.

Originally posted by rman88:

my preist or my sorc is going to be my mechanics guy. i havn't decided which thou i think i will pick the one that has the best base lore. just encase i want to use scrolls. other then that i plan on leveling up atheltics to 5 and survival.

Neither Priest nor Wizard get a skill bonus for Mechanics. Rogue +2, Chanter +1 and Cipher +1. With the other classes, you will need to invest all skill points into Mechanics. As outlined in the posts before.

Originally posted by rman88:

meanwhile my figher and palladin will act as a sheild for my barbarian. which i plan on making him a life stealing beast that will rapadily cleave down an entire army while his strogmen protect his flanks.

Just don't make your Fighter and Paladin too defensive. That will hurt the overall performance of your party a lot. Offense is the better defense.