How important are skills?

[glittma]

Trickery is vital, obviously.

How much do the others matter? Does a party need to cover them all?

[Dixon Sider]

1 person for each skill is acceptable. The only exception is perception. Make sure you have a few perceptive people. I max it out on 3 people at the very least.

[Singrave]

there are many skill checks in game.
so, it's good to have almost all skills covered by you and your companions.
Sneak skill can be a real combat changer when you sneak in with your AOE nuker and make foes suffer before they even see you.

[Aria Athena]

Like half the game's xp is behind successful skill checks and that's only a mild exaggeration. For that reason, Persuasion is also very important imo.

[jsaving]

Depends on the definition of "need". Nearly everyone in the party should max trickery/perception and the MC should max persuasion. Other skills are less necessary but each helps with certain dialogues/puzzles over the course of the game, so it is a good idea though not really "needed" to have one person covering each. The least needed for dialogues/puzzles would be stealth and especially UMD, though stealth/UMD may be crucial to your playstyle for other reasons.

[haplok]

No reason for everyone to max trickery. 1 character is enough. Maybe 2 if you want to be extra safe.
Perception sure, get it on most everyone who can be competent with it (class skill and/or solid Wisdom and/or class/feat/racial boosts), because the checks are often passive in the background and cannot be repeated on a single character until you level-up and raise the skill.

Regarding Persuasion, there is little reason to force the MC to learn it. Any permanent party member will do, really. Exception: you enable the option: "Only skill user gets experience from skills" and want to funnel all the skill xp to your MC.

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by haplok:

No reason for everyone to max trickery. 1 character is enough. Maybe 2 if you want to be extra safe.
Perception sure, get it on most everyone who can be competent with it (class skill and/or solid Wisdom and/or class/feat/racial boosts), because the checks are often passive in the background and cannot be repeated on a single character until you level-up and raise the skill.

Regarding Persuasion, there is little reason to force the MC to learn it. Any permanent party member will do, really. Exception: you enable the option: "Only skill user gets experience from skills" and want to funnel all the skill xp to your MC.

Aren't there a few high xp Persuasion checks limited to only the MC's skill later in the game? I'm still early on, just hitting level 5, but from reading around it sounds like there are some pretty high reward checks later.

[haplok]

The high reward checks are never limited to the MC (again, you COULD use the "only skill user gets xp from skills" option to accelerate the MC's progression, that would change the situation).

There are a few situations when the MC is alone, but none of them involves high skillchecks/rewards. The only one that has some impact story-wise is Nok-Nok's duel with the goblin king, but you can buff and/or save-scum the victory there (the checks aren't particularly high).

[Mork]

In order of importance in my opinion

Master

Perception: One master and as many as possible characters with it
Trickery: I like to have a secondary user in it
Persuasion: Experience boost and conversations

General

Nature: camping and inspection
World: camping and inspection
Arcane: items identifications and inspection
Mobility: 3pts for AC and many skill checks
Athletic: many skill checks
Religion: the less useful lore

Optional

Stealth: 1/2 to 3/4 skills pts is normally enough. Many traps are in front of enemies.
Use magical device: all wand = DC 20, scroll = DC 20 + level of the spell and 1 pts can sometime be enough to use wand if you have some charisma.