About the 'ascetic' quirk. (and questions about leadership build)

[Tryclyde]

I'm building a leadership character and am thinking of giving her the ascetic trait.

Her stats 2 1 3 2 6 4 10.
She's going to use handguns, leadership and either surgeon or field medic.

I checked the wiki and could not find a 'must have' trinket for this character so I could use the point to get awareness to 4, giving her 12 combat initiative and 7 action points at the start of the game. Extra attributes later in the game would go to awareness to keep combat initiative up, so she doesn't fall too far behind combat wise.

I could lower charisma to 8 (would that be enough radius for a leadership character?) and buff coordination to 4, giving her 9 action points with the tinkerer perk resulting in 3 shots per round with most handguns.

What do you guys think, would this be a solid leader character? Charisma 10/coordination 2 or should I do 8/4 for forementioned reasons?

[Gillsing]

Surgeon seems like a skill suited for someone who'll be quick to act and fast to move to the location of a dying Ranger. And handguns seem like a weapon better suited for someone who'll be able to enjoy the accuracy bonus from the Leadership skill, for low AP Precise Strikes. For general combat effectiveness I think nothing can beat the Speed attribute, so that's the one I'd max before putting extra points into other stats like Awareness or Intelligence. Depending on how close you might be able to keep your team, maybe lower Charisma might even be a better deal as long as Speed 10 can be acquired? Though perhaps you plan to put level-up points into Speed to max it at level 40? That would work, I guess.

The main benefit of Ascetic that I have read about is that it applies its bonus every time the character starts the game, so you can abuse that quirk to have all your Rangers reach max attributes and max all the skills. Other than that I'd have to say that the ability to switch trinkets depending on which skill you're going to use is more powerful. But also annoying. And normally there are better quirks to get.

[Tryclyde]

Perhaps I should swap to submachine guns and give pistols to someone else. I had not thought about precision strikes.
Instead of surgeon I guess I'll go for field medic then. Since leadership requires this ranger to be somewhat in the middle of the group I guess I can make that work, and give surgeon to a faster ranger like you said.

You are right about speed, if you want any decent combat usability, especially on an already gimped character, it is invaluable.
I tinkered with attributes a bit and came up with 2 1 1 2 10 4 8, resulting in 8 (9 with tinkering) action points and 11 initiative which is solid movement and 1 burst shot with submachine guns each turn.
The point from ascetic and the points every 10 levels go into awareness to get initiative up, resulting in more turns and thus better combat effectiveness.
Charisma at 8 should suffice I guess, if I keep the recruits closer to her so they don't go rogue and I don't spread out too much during combat. The 2 points I save from not maxing charisma went into speed to max it out. I just need to find out how much of a difference 4m radius is.

The reason I'm thinking about ascetic is because I don't want to double dip on quirks. I have a submachine/demolition ranger with psychopath (combat specced), a brittle bones sniper (also combat specced) and an assault rifle max int ranger with delayed gratification whose combat stats look quite good at 10 action points and 13 initiative.
Your post made me think about switching handguns and submachineguns out on those 2 rangers.
Handguns+demolitions sounds like an all round useful combat character tbh.

Ascetic feels like the best choice for this leader character since I don't want to give her 'raised in the circus' and have her clown around all game :)

If you know of any trinket, which comes early enough, that would beat ascetic on a character using either pistols or submachine guns, leadership and field medic, I'm all ears.

Thanks for your reaction, made me look a bit different at certain things.
Cheers

edit:grammar

[Gillsing]

I see one quirk which you don't have: Thick-Skinned. And I've been thinking of a Leadership-Ranger with that quirk, and Field Medic. It's really quite nice to have a single Ranger who can get invulnerable to all conventional weapons. Regrettable to lose all that movement you get with Speed 10 though, so it's quite a different concept. But the invulnerability only really requires the quirk and three perks, which in turn require only Bladed Weapons 3 and Weaponsmithing 8.

Oh, and the trinket of choice would be the Cleric's Cross (+1 Field Medic, +2 Surgeon, -5% Evasion), which you can buy in Titan Valley. Handy thing to have since it gives the Surgeon skill without costing any skill points. And I'd say it's early enough. The good thing about not maxing Charisma is that you can use a Spiked Collar to boost Charisma, and that's a very early trinket in my experience.

I guess those trinkets don't beat Ascetic, but Pair of Engagement Rings (-1 Action Points, +3 Combat Initiative) should beat Ascetic, and are quite common in LA, where things 'get real'.

[SnapSlav]

There is an EXCELLENT Leadership Trinket, the Tree-headed Snake Amulet, and you get this fairly early on in the game (hidden cave in Radio Tower map, Perception 5+ required to spot)! It's 2 free levels of Leadership, and it only costs your character 3% chance to crit, which makes it ideal for either a character who doesn't char about crit (explosives, energy weapons, shotguns) or who uses weapons which have such incredibly high chance to crit that 3% is nothing (ARs, SRs, and yes, handguns)!

So I'd suggest putting Ascetic onto a more combat-centric character. This helps get them higher levels in a combat skill (sub-4 really sucks, so you wanna get your characters to 5 or 6 ASAP) as well as make them better suited to combat with that extra attribute point.

Ascetic ALSO has a really broken feature in that it keeps getting RE-APPLIED every time a character with Ascetic starts a new game! Since any ranger you created becomes a Veteran when you beat the game, and you can start new games with your Veterans (they start the game with all the stats as when they completed the game), a Veteran who had Ascetic starts with the bonuses they ended their previous game with, AND they begin with a fresh set of bonus points thanks to Ascetic. If you decide to abuse this, you can theoretically start a game with a team of 4 rangers who all have Godlike 10 in every attribute with every skill maxed...

But I would not actually recommend such silliness.

As stated above, I'd suggest going with some other Quirk so your Leader can actually equip the Three-headed Snake Amulet. Charisma anywhere between 4 and 8 is perfectly adequate for Leadership aura radius. The less CH, the faster you want your Leaders to be, so that they can always position themselves in the right spot. For less hastle, get that 6-8 CH so your radius can cover much of the screen! Thick Skinned makes for a good defensive choice for Leaders, because they'll need to be literally "in the middle" of most combat situations, and it won't be easy to stay safely hidden behind cover when they're trying to be close enough for their squad members to get the bonus. EXCEPT this also makes them slower, so getting into position is much harder.

My original Leader had Twitchy, and she was able to VERY quickly move in and out of combat, so there were hardly ever any turns where my recruits weren't affected by her Leadership. Her starting CH of 8 also helped, too.

When you're in combat, hover your cursor over the Leader's flag icon located directly above their portrait (only visible during combat) and you'll see the exact radius that you're working with. You should feel more than fine with 6-8!

If you wanna REALLY meta-game and have a positively broken team, make all 4 of your starting rangers Disparnumerophobic, and only ever call into Ranger HQ to level up when your main 4 rangers will level to even levels! You'll be working with rangers who ALL have 7 extra attribute points, ridiculously high combat potential, and the only downside is that you level up less often!

My personal favorite combat Quirks are Twitchy (explosives don't care about chance to hit), Delayed Gratification (fewer SP earlier, WAY more SP by the game's end), Two Pump Chump (get combat done in as few turns as possible), and Disparnumerophobia as mentioned. Brittle Bones looks great on paper, but you really need to be able to cover ground in fewer turns later in the game, and having slow rangers will really start to cripple your combat effectiveness after a while. Way of the Squeezins can also be really good, but it's expensive to keep up the habit.

Just something to consider. =)

[Tryclyde]

Wow, thanks for the info. I'll check out twitchy for my explosives user.
Maybe I'll do a Disparnumerophobic run someday, but I'll stick to a more classic run for now.

About that leadershiup trinket; can you come back later when your perception is higher and find it even if you have cleared the cave already?

Thanks.

[Gillsing]

Perception is for finding that cave entrance in the first place, so it's not a cave that you would've found and cleared earlier with lower Perception. Good place to use a couple of explosives. Initiate combat with an explosive from a lower initiative Ranger, and then let the highest initiative Ranger finish the job before the targets can move. Or maybe throw more explosives with lower yield? I guess that works too, but Sabot rockets are so cheap at Holliday's store after the discount.

[red255]

walks in, yeah Ascetic is something of a joke, you start the game you get +1 stat point and +5 skills, you run to the radio tower, run thru highpool or ag center, run back to ranger citadel and press the red button.

characters get exported and you can start a new file.

Takes like 20 minutes to do highpool if you hurry.

Brittle bones is 2 AP which is basically 4 STAT points in coord. +1 for the trinket.

so it takes around 5 runs thru the game for ascetic to be better than other perks. number feels about right.

by all means do so if you want to.

5 runs thru the game would be 40 skill points, 5 books in brawling for some lucky ranger. 5 toaster repair books too.

I did it once, spent a couple hours timing how long it takes and seeing exactly what the minimum task required is for getting into ranger citadel, basically Ranger citadel is unlocked after you set up the radio repeater. in ag center or Highpool, nothing else is required. you'll want to flag the 3 statues too and grab some skillbooks fine. I wouldn't recommend stacking more than 5 starts on it though.

[Tryclyde]

To be honest, I was not aware of the ascetic bug before starting this thread and am not intending to abuse it.
I was just asking about the trinket tradeoff on a particular build.

[red255]

Originally posted by Tryclyde:

To be honest, I was not aware of the ascetic bug before starting this thread and am not intending to abuse it.
I was just asking about the trinket tradeoff on a particular build.

trinkets are generally worth about 1 stat point and can bump a skill a couple points making them worth more than a few skill points especially because you can swap them as needed.

As such Ascetic is not worth it without stacking it several times.

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Tryclyde:

Wow, thanks for the info.

Most welcome! =)

Originally posted by Tryclyde:

I'll check out twitchy for my explosives user.

It's also worth noting that basically ANY weapon type interacts just fine with Twitchy by the late game. It's just in that early game where your CtH% is so p***-poor that you will HURT from the Twitchy penalty. But Explosives don't HAVE accuracy, so it doesn't matter! If you want to start off using grenades/RPGs then transition into some other weapon type, eventually you'll get access to high-grade weapon mods, so those will offset the penalty as well. You'll always suffer the Twitchy penalty, but it can be easily mitigated.

Originally posted by Tryclyde:

About that leadershiup trinket; can you come back later when your perception is higher and find it even if you have cleared the cave already?

Yes, ANY** skill check can be tried later, so if you explore the Radio Tower map with Perception 3, you can always come back 5 levels, 10 levels later, or whenever to discover the secret cave. It's simply easy to get this Trinket early, because it's hidden in the beginning area of the game, and getting Perception up to 5 is just 14 SP, so either 1 level on a Skill Monkey character, or a few levels on your standard 4-Int combatant, and you've got the necessary levels. ALSO there's a VERY powerful +2 Perception Trinket that can be acquired very early on as well!

Realistically speaking, of course, there's no rush, so take your time! Explore the areas in whatever order you wish, at whatever pace you wish. You simply have the OPTION to grab really good stuff super fast if you know where they are!

I'd simply recommend getting Perception up to about 5-6 as soon as you can, because it's INCREDIBLY useful for detecting not just secrets, but also hidden traps/mines as you're traveling. You might spot a mine and think that you know where is safe to walk, only to step on a higher-level mine nearby that you didn't detect! There's a patch early on in Highpool with exactly this scenario...

**Speech skill checks are the one exception to being able to "try again later". Because conversations don't repeat, you get one chance to say the convincing dialog, then the opportunity is gone.

Originally posted by red255:

trinkets are generally worth about 1 stat point and can bump a skill a couple points making them worth more than a few skill points especially because you can swap them as needed.

I wouldn't characterize Ascetic like that... The weakest Trinkets grant 1 entire level to 1 or more skills, and to begin with that's just 2 SP. So from the start Ascetic is "costing" you 2 or more SP, if ever you get a skill Trinket that your Ascetic character could really use, but is unable to. With better Trinkets this trade-off cost just gets bigger. Worse, because skills cost more SP to level them as their level gets higher and higher, the cost goes exponentially higher, too! ONE Demolitions Trinket near the mid-to-late game will provide over 40 SP in benefit! That's a pretty HUGE drawback for an Ascetic.

This is why I'd say Ascetic is better for combatants, because there are no Trinkets for weapon skills, so you gotta level up your weapon skills manually. If you make a stupid (1-Int) Ascetic into a combat specialist, focusing on just 2 realy synergistic combat abilities, they start with a high level in their weapon skill, they max out that skill fairly early on because that's their whole focus, and they have 3-9 attribute points they get to spend in more combat-oriented areas, making them even deadlier! That's more SPD, more STR, more COR, more AWR, so by sacrificing their potential to wield any useful skills, they turn into a real beast in combat!

At least, on paper, anyway...