Wisdom/Intelligence for martial characters?

[Redmore Trout]

I realize that both wisdom and intelligence serve as the primary stat for certain casters, and intelligence allows you to have more skills. My question really just concerns martial characters. If I dump wisdom and intelligence as a melee class will it affect me? Am I going to get half way through the game and find out one of these stats is super important for a save, or otherwise have my brain eaten lol?

[Mork]

For wisdom, will save is very important and less then 10 is not recommended unless your character has good will save from his class.

Intelligence is more a personal choice to dump or keep. If you like having some skills points, then keep some intelligence or if you don't care about skill then just dump it... up to you.

[Martialis]

Intelligence is important for fighters (to 13, at least) so you can get Weapon Expertise and the associated combat maneuvers like Trip and Disarm.

[Tuidjy]

Both have specific uses, and you can do just fine with both of them at 7 (-2).

Wisdom governs your Will saving throws. But if you have other ways of boosting those, you can be A-OK. For example:
- some 'fighterish' classes have high Will saving throws
- there's a paladin class that does not cast, and gets its Charisma bonus added to all throws
- you can use spells that reinforce Mind saves (Mind blank) or add your Charisma bonus to Will
- there are feats that patch up Will throws, like Iron Will, Improved Iron Will, and the feats that increase Will throws for fighters with weapon training

Intelligence governs some spell casting abilities and your skill points. You may not care about those at all. It also serves as a gateway for some rather useful feats. But, there are ways to get feats without meeting the prerequisites, or you can just build without those feats.

I have had successful mercenaries with 7/7 in the Stolen Land DLCs, so in combat, it's all good. An 8/8 paladin in the main campaign is doing A-OK, as well, because his maxed charisma is making up for his low wisdom. He trades his casting skill for a few extra feats. By the way, his Wisdom did not stay at 8, either. Without actually focusing on raising it, it's above 10, due to quests and items.

[jsaving]

Originally posted by The Technocrats:

If I dump wisdom and intelligence as a melee class will it affect me?

If you dump wisdom then you will fail will saves more often which means your DPS will drop to 0 during more battles. If you dump INT then there will be no effect unless you are wanting to take combat maneuvers like trip or disarm, which might or might not matter depending on your build.

[DarkFenix]

As a rule of thumb, don't dump wisdom. Intelligence and charisma are the two primary dump stats for martial classes. There are variations of course (ie. Paladin gets massive will saves so can dump wisdom, but uses charisma for spellcasting and abilities so can't dump that) but in general it holds true.

[wendigo211]

Honestly, there aren't that many enemies that target will save in this game and against the ones that do, having a 12 wisdom as opposed to an 8 for a +2 isn't going to make a huge difference (Other than a Monk or Ranger you aren't going to make a melee character with a wisdom higher than that) In the first chapter there's all the fear and hideous laughter casters, but you can handle fear with Remove Fear (Bard level 1). In acts 2 and 3 I don't think there are any enemies who target will, (maybe the Kobold Boomsayers if you don't kill them fast enough). By the later chapters you'll be able to fix it with gear and buffs. So if you want to dump wisdom, go for it.

Int might be a bit worse than than wisdom since skills actually matter if you want to max your level early. You don't need too much but you'll want: 3 mobility for Fighting Defensively, Perception (cause everyone needs Perception in this game), and Trickery and Persuasion give all the XP (there are a few throne room Persuasion events where only your main's skills are used). You'll also want to level any skills you need to qualify for your prestige classes.

[Mooew]

Originally posted by Martialis:

Intelligence is important for fighters (to 13, at least) so you can get Weapon Expertise and the associated combat maneuvers like Trip and Disarm.

Those are bad in this game unfortunately.

On topic, if you're still unsure about dumping Int, then do it and take Human (or H-Orc) as a race, you won't notice anything missing.

Disagree on Will being irrelevant tho, but anyway it's hardly quantifiable

[Blackdragon]

Several powerful melee builds use Wisdom and Intelligence (sometimes both) - namely, those that include Sword Saint and Monk (Traditional or Sensei) levels for extra feats and stat bonus to AC.

These builds get extremely high AC - and more importantly, touch AC - as well as a plethora of combat abilities, both offensive and defensive.

The simplest example would be Monk 1/Sword Saint 19. More complex versions include other classes (such as Vivisectionist, Dragon Disciple, Paladin, Eldritch Knight etc.) to diversify their portfolio.

I would suggest searching for concrete builds (InEffect has a pretty comprehensive list drawn up) and trying them out using the Respec mod. Although all are powerful in their way, some are easier to play, and others "bloom" only in late game.

[Azure]

Cha (unless your a Paladin) is often a safe stat to reduce.
Possibly less so if your talking about the MC who may want at least a little bit for when they have to talk and a face NPC isn't around.

Wisdom is never a good idea since Wil saves stop a lot of bad stuff from happening and while most martial classes are never going to have a great number there its still best to not make it worse.

Int depends on how much you value you having more than one skill point per level mainly and a limited selection of feats (i have been getting good mileage out of Combat Expertise)

[jsaving]

There is no set answer to this question. Dumping any stat has consequences and the question is always whether what you gain is enough to offset what you are losing.

It's true that WIS helps protect against mental status effects but there are a lot of strong melee builds that dump it, including InEffect's classic sword saint build. This is not because wisdom is weak, but because a properly buffed and equipped character using proper tactics can minimize (though not entirely eliminate) the adverse impact of low WIS.

On the other hand there are lot of non-paladin melee builds that focus pretty heavily on CHA even though you might think at first glance WIS would be a better investment. Often you'd pump CHA because you're looking to have some combination of intimidating/dazzling/dreadful, though you might also do it because you want to properly leverage your cleric's bestow grace spell once she's able to cast it.

Melee builds are all over the map on INT depending on whether you care about combat expertise and how many skills you need maxed on that particular character. You can often safely dump it to 7, especially if playing a human, but it's also fairly common to see melee builds leave INT at 10 or even take it into the 12-14 range.

[wendigo211]

The thing about will saves is you can suppress or make your character immune to many of the effects:

• Remove Fear: suppresses fear for its duration.
  
• Unbreakable Heart: suppresses negative emotions (Fear, Overwhelming Presence) and effects that would make you harm an ally (Confusion).
  
• Freedom of Movement: suppresses paralysis (Hold Person) and slow
  
• Blind-Fight: immunity to gaze effects other than the defaced sisters' gaze attack (which is a fortitude save anyway).

I think that leaves: Colour Spray (which has a HD limit), Rainbow Pattern (the gnome mages in the Pitax chapter cast this), Hideous Laughter (some of the bandit mages and bards cast this), Fascinate (Nereids and the Wicked Chanter), Blinding Beauty (Nymphs) and the Spawn of Rovagug's mind attack.

Really Fortitude is the save you have to worry about because, other than poison (which can be countered by delay poison), you have to save against all those nasty effects.

[InEffect]

given all decent martial characters have at lease 'some' spellcasting - int might be useful, same as cha. And then there are monks everywhere... long story short: it depends.

[Edstyles]

What ive found is that often mini bosses will hit you anyway regardless of how much will saves . Like on a certain fight all my chars got blinded I'm guessiing the save is not to get blinded yet entire party hit blinded instantly . So meh prolly don't matter much . Even the tanks with natural high fortitude got hit :/

[InEffect]

Pretty sure you're talking blinding beauty. That's a will save. But the problem with that is not exactly super-high DC(which is still pretty high), but the fact it rolls every round.

edit. Checked. It's fort.

[Lampros]

So Will saves and Fortitude saves are good to increase, but Reflex not so useful?