Good skills for companions to have vs main character?

[Altonu]

I keep encountering cases where I'm a little or a lot short on the requirements to use various skills in conversation. I'm considering re-specing, but to do that with my whole party will be a sizable investment, so I want to have a better grasp of what important before I do...

As such I'd like to share my observations so far and see what others have noticed that I may have overlooked. I'm only lvl 7, so I've probably only explored a small part of the game too.

Active skills.
These seem to mostly apply to overland exploration encounters or world interaction in general, but I've noticed Arcana and Sleight of hand come up a few times in conversations, so those seem like good candidate skills for a main character to put more points into.

Mechanics is once again a must have skill, but from what I've seen, it works just fine as a companion skill.

Athletics is also quite useful for second wind as well as a lot of exploration events.

Stealth comes up a lot in exploration events, and of course exploration if you want to try to sneak by something, but I think it has to be very high to be useful there (I dont have a char with max stealth, but I can't sneak by NPCs very well at all even with boots of stealth). If anyoen has had luck with stealth for sneakign through a room of enemies, I'd like to know how high your skill was.

As far as I can tell, Alchemy and Explosives seem exclusivly about item effectiveness, and I dont think I've seen either come up in conversation, but I could immagine scenarios where it could make sense as a conversation option or encounter option.

Passive skills.
From what I've seen so far, Bluff, Insight, and History seem to be the most common conversation checks. I've seen a fair nbumber of Religion, Metaphysics and Streetwise checks as well and a few Intimidate checks. Oddly, I don't recall seeing many diplo checks (whcih is what I've been putting my points into).

Survival seems to be more often used in exploration event/encounters and is used frequently there, so negelecting it could hurt, but most of those don't tell you what you need, so I have no idea how much is useful there.

I've only been taking notes on skill checks since yesterday, but the lowest skill check I've encountered is a 3, and the highest so far has been a 9 with 5-8 being most common.

[Kai Heilos]

I spend most of the game sneaking, you can sneak past most NPCs with minimal skill and I've been going past enemies pretty easily with 7 points at the moment.
I've also never seen Alchemy and Explosives in conversation.
Arcana, Slight of Hand and mechanics you can put on companions, Athletics and Stealth you probably want on your main character.
All Passive skills come up throughout conversation, so you want them all raised decently.

The highest mechanics I've seen was 15 and the highest conversation check was 10.

[=[NK]= Col. Jack O'Neil]

+1 to this!! I want to reroll but got super frustrated not getting bonus' when I thought I would!

I think it's beneficial to focus on certain skills with companions at ranks 3, 7 and something else because that's when you get +1, +4 and another bonus respectively, and I think you're right, mechanics would be better for companions.

I prefer to not miss out on many dialogue options :(

[Pi is exactly 3]

I haven't gotten very far in the game (soo many restarts) but I have encountered alchemy ONCE. When you go to Teketaka (big main city) and go into the slums (The gutter? Something like that) there's a woman hiding a bunch of sick people. When asking about the sickness there was an alchemy choice. That's it.

[Drake]

Active skills checks are not common, except maybe athletics for encounters. Passive checks are way more prominent, like intimitade,religion, bluff etc. those were made especially for conversation checks.

[Midnight]

Don't forget that stealth is good for pickpocketing NPCs which is pretty profitable early game and you don't even need that high of a skill, about 5 should be enough. Pickpocketing also often gets you a key to those 10+ difficulty locked chests. There are not that many high difficulty locked chests without a key hidden somewhere around them.

Funnily enough Sleight of Hand has nothing to do with pickpocketing in the game. You don't even get any opportunity to do it in conversations as far as I know.

[Kai Heilos]

Originally posted by Midnight:

Don't forget that stealth is good for pickpocketing NPCs which is pretty profitable early game and you don't even need that high of a skill, about 5 should be enough. Pickpocketing also often gets you a key to those 10+ difficulty locked chests. There are not that many high difficulty locked chests without a key hidden somewhere around them.

Funnily enough Sleight of Hand has nothing to do with pickpocketing in the game. You don't even get any opportunity to do it in conversations as far as I know.

Sleight of hand is sipposed to allow you to pickpocket bigger items. I once found someone with a dagger that required 4 skill in it. But other than that one dagger I've not found people with anything but money and drugs