How Many Skills?

[Big Blue Dude]

Already restarted the campaign once since buying and managed to optimize my team- to a point. What I'm wondering is, how many skills can you max out on a character? Assuming I don't have repeat skills across characters, and I burn a skillbook on the tenth most expensive level to save points, how many can I get to level 10?

Additionally, while I have seen some skillchecks for it, they seem to be for dialogue in places that can be revisited. So is it safe to say the weapon/armor modding skill should be reserved for a ranger you leave at the base 99% of the time?

[Rworqx]

In my first blind playthrough I finished a few days ago on ranger difficulty i had enough to max out 3 skill trees and a bunch of left over points to fill another skill halway.

my whole squad had low charisma maximum i had was 4 (so slower leveling due to less xp)

[Big Blue Dude]

So 3 is the safe-zone, you'd say?

[valium]

With smart use of skill books, you can max 4 skills at the very very end with 10 in intelligence. This is an absolute min max though, straight 4 maxed skills with no dips for any of the talents. So probably plan for 3 so you can get things like the reducing explosives damage with excess talent points.

[Meowella]

To max a skill costs 28 skill points, 22 if you use a skill book at rank 9
Your total skill points consists of:
3 per level
1 per point of Intelligence
0.5 per level with the Poindexter Perk

You will finish somewhere between level 25 and 28, meaning your skill point total will be:
1) 85-94 skill points with Int 10 (88 allows for 4 maxed skills with proper skill book use)
2) 97-108 skill points with Int 10 and Poindexter background
If we ignore Poindexter entirely, you want to focus on maxing 3 skills and then picking up a rank 7 and rank 5 skill (3 maxed skills = 66, rank 7 = 13, rank 5 = 7 so 86 points)

There are 22 skills in game - 6 weapon and 16 non-weapon skills.
Lockpicking/Explosives/Sneaky Stuff/Mechanics/Nerd Stuff - these are the bread and butter skills, vitally important for passing a plethora of skill checks and giving you tons of free xp for passing them.

First Aid/Leadership/Hard A/Kiss A - Important and useful skills, just less xp available for using them. Leadership has rank 3 and 5 perks which are incredibly powerful for combat, so definitely take at least rank 5 in leadership even if you don't bother maxing it (you should as it's free combat damage)

Toaster Repair/Weird Science - Toaster Repair has a rank 7 perk for 25% fire damage, Weird Science adds 3% fire/energy/cold damage. They're not vital, but are important in terms of TONS of bonus damage included in taking them.

Armor Modding/Weapon Modding/Barter - these skills don't need to travel with you, they can be left at base on an extra char you create, to free up skill space on the move. I would recommend 1 char you take with you has Barter 3 and Penny Pincher talent, since this reduces the cost of bulk purchases by 20%, aka AMMO for certain weapons).

Animal Whisperer/Survival - these skills are not important particularly. Animal Whisperer 5 on some chars late game for the free bonus stats with the perk Spirit Animal doubling the bonus is worth it on some chars.

Just as a reminder for levelling:
If you add and remove people from the party, the newly returned character has an average level based on the rest of the group. Because charisma and passing skill checks means you get different amounts of xp, levelling differently, you can use this for free level ups:
If your party was level 15/15/14/13/12/12 then remove the 12/12/13/14 from the group, then add 1 back at a time... when they re-join their level is now 15, for free. Repeat until you have 15/15/15/15/15/15 in the group.

I, personally, do the following:
1. Sniper with Sniper Rifles, Lockpicking, Nerd Stuff
2. Brawler with Brawling, First Aid
3. Heavy with Big Guns, Toaster Repair, Weird Science
4. Demo with Explosives, Small Arms (7), Sneaky Stuff
5. Kwon with Auto Weapons, Hard A, Kiss A (and Barter 3)
6. Lucia with Small Arms, Leadership, Mechanics

My Sniper has to ensure Lockpicking and Nerd Stuff take priority, with just enough Sniper rifle to equip the gun until they're maxed
My Brawler gets First Aid 3, then everything goes into Brawling until it's maxed. After that, First Aid 4 or 5 before picking up Weird Science purely for late game fire punching with a capsule in a power fist)
My Heavy gets tar thrower in Steeltown around level 12, so ensure you have the rank 7 toaster perk by then - but it's just pure damage with her skills.
My Demo girl needs small arms 7 for the reload perk and eventually equips an explosives pistol, but is mostly about rockets.
Kwon (when you respec him as soon as you have the 550 credits to respec him and Lucia) and wants to pick up Barter 3 and the penny pincher talent, before grabbing Auto weapons 8 for Stormer perk asap
Lucia is your Charisma char, so adding mechanics here helps her level stay high alongside your Sniper to do the trick with adding/removing from group.

[Please note, when you add/remove chars, you must always have TWO created chars in the group. With this setup, your highest level chars will be Sniper and Lucia - so you will keep sniper and lucia plus most likely the Demo, but should still get the higher level for the new people you add back... then once everyone has levelled up, add/remove the 2nd char you kept so their level goes up too]

[valium]

Animal whisperer 10 is required for an achievement, if you care about those, and still extremely useful for adding more fodder for survival on supreme jerk, but otherwise completely unnecessary overall for skill checks. I dont bother with it since getting the achievement because you dont get exp for their kills, and they take FOREVER to make their moves in combat, slowing things down immensely.

I have found zero use for survival, I WANT to do the random encounters for truck squishing and easy exp/money/ammo.

Leadership is extremely useful early game for the accuracy, plateau's out a bit the later things get on supreme jerk, but still worth the investment for the boss kill bonus, which seems to be a massive chunk of the mobs you face late in the game.

[Big Blue Dude]

Originally posted by Meowella:

To max a skill costs 28 skill points, 22 if you use a skill book at rank 9
Your total skill points consists of:
3 per level
1 per point of Intelligence
0.5 per level with the Poindexter Perk

You will finish somewhere between level 25 and 28, meaning your skill point total will be:
1) 85-94 skill points with Int 10 (88 allows for 4 maxed skills with proper skill book use)
2) 97-108 skill points with Int 10 and Poindexter background
If we ignore Poindexter entirely, you want to focus on maxing 3 skills and then picking up a rank 7 and rank 5 skill (3 maxed skills = 66, rank 7 = 13, rank 5 = 7 so 86 points)

There are 22 skills in game - 6 weapon and 16 non-weapon skills.
Lockpicking/Explosives/Sneaky Stuff/Mechanics/Nerd Stuff - these are the bread and butter skills, vitally important for passing a plethora of skill checks and giving you tons of free xp for passing them.

That's very informative, thank you! So hypothetically if I wanted to go full goblin mode, didn't care about combat optimization but just wanted to see those numbers climb and those skills get maxed, should I max out charisma, then intelligence, then another skill (strength for armor or coordination for action points)? Or is Charisma negligible compared to other stats?

[valium]

Charisma first, for the exp gain. You get a flat 1 skill point per intelligence, so you can get that at any time. Just be aware that the level cap is more about the extremely high exponential exp requirement when you get into the 20s. So this hypothetical is mostly just for early game levels, not long term.

[Meowella]

Originally posted by Big Blue Dude:

That's very informative, thank you! So hypothetically if I wanted to go full goblin mode, didn't care about combat optimization but just wanted to see those numbers climb and those skills get maxed, should I max out charisma, then intelligence, then another skill (strength for armor or coordination for action points)? Or is Charisma negligible compared to other stats?

Are you going for ONE character with insane skills, or the whole group?

Single Char:
1. Get a single char to level 26 with Int 10 and Poindexter background. This is worth 101 skill points, enough for 4 skills to rank 9. Learn 4 skill books to max them to 10.
2. Respec. You now have 101+24 (6 per skill book) skill points, so 125 - enough for 5 skills to rank 9. Then use 5 skill books and respec.
3. You have 125+30 = 155 skill points on a single char, enough for 7 skills to rank 9 (22*7 is 154). Use 7 skill books
4. When you respec this time you've got 155+42 skill points, or 197 on a single character. Learn 8 skills and use 8 skill books (Note: If you purchase everything from Ananda in Ranger HQ, you can buy the Toaster Repair book multiple times to enable you access to enough skill books to do this step).

So if your plan is a single char, you can use all skill books in game (plus toaster repair three times from Ananda) to achieve 8 skills maxed, with 1 skill left at rank 9.

Group:
1. Make a char with charisma 10 and lockpicking + nerd stuff
2. Make a second char with charisma 10 and explosives + sneaky stuff
3. Focus on doing literally everything, farming some random world encounters and ensuring you get to level 30 with those two, using Sergei to change party members in and out so everybody is level 30.
4. Every char you create needs Poindexter and Intelligence 10

Doing this you will have 4 chars at level 30 with 145 skill points. The 2 NPCs will be on 130 skill points instead.
Because of skill book limitations, it's not 22 skill points per skill beyond the fourth but 5 so...
4 skills = 88
5 skills = 116
6 skills = 144

So you will be able to max 6 skills on each created char and 5 on the other 2. (though you don't really need 34 maxed skills when the game only has 22 lol)

If you simply want every skill maxed that is 4 per created char and 3 per NPC - just using Poindexter background and Int 10 is enough without all these crazy shenanigans.

[Big Blue Dude]

Originally posted by valium:

Charisma first, for the exp gain. You get a flat 1 skill point per intelligence, so you can get that at any time. Just be aware that the level cap is more about the extremely high exponential exp requirement when you get into the 20s. So this hypothetical is mostly just for early game levels, not long term.

Originally posted by Meowella:

Originally posted by Big Blue Dude:

That's very informative, thank you! So hypothetically if I wanted to go full goblin mode, didn't care about combat optimization but just wanted to see those numbers climb and those skills get maxed, should I max out charisma, then intelligence, then another skill (strength for armor or coordination for action points)? Or is Charisma negligible compared to other stats?

Are you going for ONE character with insane skills, or the whole group?

Single Char:
1. Get a single char to level 26 with Int 10 and Poindexter background. This is worth 101 skill points, enough for 4 skills to rank 9. Learn 4 skill books to max them to 10.
2. Respec. You now have 101+24 (6 per skill book) skill points, so 125 - enough for 5 skills to rank 9. Then use 5 skill books and respec.
3. You have 125+30 = 155 skill points on a single char, enough for 7 skills to rank 9 (22*7 is 154). Use 7 skill books
4. When you respec this time you've got 155+42 skill points, or 197 on a single character. Learn 8 skills and use 8 skill books (Note: If you purchase everything from Ananda in Ranger HQ, you can buy the Toaster Repair book multiple times to enable you access to enough skill books to do this step).

So if your plan is a single char, you can use all skill books in game (plus toaster repair three times from Ananda) to achieve 8 skills maxed, with 1 skill left at rank 9.

Group:
1. Make a char with charisma 10 and lockpicking + nerd stuff
2. Make a second char with charisma 10 and explosives + sneaky stuff
3. Focus on doing literally everything, farming some random world encounters and ensuring you get to level 30 with those two, using Sergei to change party members in and out so everybody is level 30.
4. Every char you create needs Poindexter and Intelligence 10

Doing this you will have 4 chars at level 30 with 145 skill points. The 2 NPCs will be on 130 skill points instead.
Because of skill book limitations, it's not 22 skill points per skill beyond the fourth but 5 so...
4 skills = 88
5 skills = 116
6 skills = 144

So you will be able to max 6 skills on each created char and 5 on the other 2. (though you don't really need 34 maxed skills when the game only has 22 lol)

If you simply want every skill maxed that is 4 per created char and 3 per NPC - just using Poindexter background and Int 10 is enough without all these crazy shenanigans.

Very informative! think I'll try a new campaign with a bit of a better build, starting to get smacked around a little too much in my current one but I refuse to lower the difficulty. Thanks everybody!

[valium]

That said, this is all grossly unnecessary. Having 3 maxed skills on 6 characters is more than enough. You dont need survival, at all, you dont need barter or armor/weapon crafting on your main team either. Just create a skill monkey and leave them at base until you need them.

[Rworqx]

Originally posted by Big Blue Dude:

So 3 is the safe-zone, you'd say?

yes.

However some people went in very much detail above :P

[Radiac]

My team, in terms of skills allocated, looks like this at level 25:

Hicks: Automatic Weapons 10 (uses book), Lockpicking 10 (book), Leadership 10 (book), Mechanics 7, First Aid 4

Hudson: Sniper Rifle 10 (book), Sneaky ♥♥♥♥ 10 (book), Hard Ass 10 (buys 7 ranks the old fashioned way, uses book for rank 8, wears Utility Item for +1 and wears helmet for additional +1, when out of combat), First Aid 1, Combat Shooting 9 (uses book from Gary Wolfe to get first ranks, level it up with skill points from there)

Drake: Big Guns 10 (book), Nerd Stuff 10 (book for rank 9, utility item for +1), Weird Science 10 (no book, because I never get that one), Leadership 6, First Aid 3

Frost: Automatic Weapons 10 (no book), Explosives 10 (book), Kiss Ass 10 (book), First Aid 7

Bishop (stays in the HQ most of the time): Armor Modding 10 (book), Weapon Modding 10 (book), Toaster Repair 10 (book).

Jodie Bell: Sniper Rifle 10, Mechanica 10 (7 ranks bought plus book, utility item, hat), First Aid 10 (9 ranks plus utility item she swaps in when needed), Animal Whisperer 10 (book, utility item swap in/out as needed)

Lucia Wesson: Small Arms 10 (book), Barter (8 ranks, plus book and utility item), Survival (8 ranks plus book and utility item), Weapon Modding 7 (6 ranks plus utility item, allows some in-field modding of scope onto guns, etc), First Aid 7, Brawling 1 (required for using the Foam Finger)

I give everyone 1 rank of First Aid early on so that everyone can use medical supplies on everyone, including themselves. I don;t use the Brawling and Melee Weapons books at all, so you can abuse those via respecs if you want.

I leave Bishop at the HQ and pull him out occasionally to do modding and crafting. At some point, you might want to but him out to go open toasters once in a while also.

[valium]

I tried using jodie as a sniper in my first playthrough, snipers are bad without the player created backgrounds/quirks. Gave her an assault rifle in subsequent playthroughs, much much better.

[Meowella]

Originally posted by valium:

I tried using jodie as a sniper in my first playthrough, snipers are bad without the player created backgrounds/quirks. Gave her an assault rifle in subsequent playthroughs, much much better.

There is a way to build NPCs as Snipers:
There is a level 24 weapon - Ray Tracer - which only has 1 shot, so you can do the same trick as explosives users do and get small Arms 7 so your next shot only costs 2ap after reloading an empty mag.

While levelling, you're either limited to a single shot some turns OR you need to put an Advanced Reload Mag (-1 mag size, -1 reload cost) to bring down the numerous Capacity 3 magazines to 2 - this would enable you to Reload (3ap) > fire (free) > fire (7ap or whatever the rifle costs) each turn.