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What kind of skills did you pick and why?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:30 am
by De_Priester
So with my first fighter I used create weapons and parry, sadly I never use parry because I don't see much effect and I don't understand the explanation given by the npc about creating weapons so I haven't used that either, nor do I really believe in making your own weapons because you can always find better ones.
For my next character I think I will either use intimidate or diplomacy since I see so many conversations in which it comes in handy.
But what did you guys and girls pick and why? How did it turn out?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:39 am
by Xandax
My current fighter selects "tumble", "diplomacy", "intimidate" and "lore" as the primary ones.
Tumble for the AC bonus, dimplomacy and intimidate I hope are selfexplaining (I've left out bluff, because I do not feel I need all 3. If I can't be diplomatic or scare people to do as I need, I have no need to attempt to bluff them
) and Lore to avoid having to pay money for identifications.
For spellcasters, I usually forego intimidation for spellcraft.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:51 am
by De_Priester
Xandax wrote:My current fighter selects "tumble", "diplomacy", "intimidate" and "lore" as the primary ones.
Tumble for the AC bonus, dimplomacy and intimidate I hope are selfexplaining (I've left out bluff, because I do not feel I need all 3. If I can't be diplomatic or scare people to do as I need, I have no need to attempt to bluff them
) and Lore to avoid having to pay money for identifications.
For spellcasters, I usually forego intimidation for spellcraft.
I actually left out lore for someone else, I found that having the dwarf (forgot his name) take lore saves you the effort and saves you to take more points into tumble or diplomacy. Now as for my characters I nearly always play neutral good and somehow I don't think intimidate fits with that as much so I will probably stick with diplomacy. Either way I am a bit of a powerplayer sometimes so I'd probably pick tumble and say either intimidate or diplomacy for the rp use.
I am curious as to other choices people made for their avatar, and for their partymembers when it comes to skills. It's a shame you can't pick skills retroactively for new partymembers since that would make it wicked.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:58 am
by smass
I am currently playing a rogue/ranger. I usually play some form of rogue combination so I have many skills to choose from and, as a rogue, the most points to distribute. I start by using all the standard rogu skills:
open lock, disarm trap, move silently, hide. I chose "two weapon fighting" as my ranger focus - so this rogue is more combat oriented, therefore, I choose to pump up tumble which is handy when moving around to try and get attacks of opportunity. I also pumped up diplomacy and use magic device. Diplomacy helps with negotiating skills and use magic device is great for using scrolls and wands to duplicate mage abilities.
I haven't messed around with set trap this time around. In NWN I pumped up set trap and then never ended up using it.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 8:04 am
by De_Priester
smass wrote:I am currently playing a rogue/ranger. I usually play some form of rogue combination so I have many skills to choose from and, as a rogue, the most points to distribute. I start all the standard ones,
open lock, disarm trap, move silently, hide. For this character I choose "two weapon fighting" as my ranger focus - so this rogue is more combat oriented, therefore, I choose to pump up
tumble which is handy when moving around to try and get attacks of opportunity. I also pumped up
diplomacy and use
magic device. Diplomacy helps with negotiating skills and use magic device is great for using scrolls and wands to duplicate mage abilities.
I haven't messed around with
set trap this time around. In NWN I pumped up set trap and then never ended up using it.
I actually think the set trap is harder to use here because you have two more partymembers to worry about and unless you know where a boss might or might now spawn there is little advantage to using the traps. The recovering of traps might give some cash but it also has a higher DC check.
As for use magic device, is there anything exceptionally worthwhile in this game in order for the skill to be effective? In NWN I picked this skill because I only had one henchmen to pick and I took the tank, so without a mage I needed this skill for the magicuse. In nwn2 you can get all sorts of partymembers so is this skill going to be a big bonus or just handy to blow away the scrolls you find but don't end up using?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 8:31 am
by Tricky
Oh, that was a tough one for me. I think the why might be interesting enough.
I kept restarting the campaign it because I didn't like my builds. I came to the conlusion I wanted excellent social skills for my first singleplayer experience, and somehow not let it weaken me. A focus on Charisma really limits your offensive capabilities, unless you are either a Sorcerer, Bard or Warlock since they draw their magic power from that attribute.
Sorcerers have to get those social skills through cross-class skills and the like, which seemed like a waste. Since they do put that magic to good use, I tried combining them with (prestige) classes that did have the social skills as class skills. That didn't work at all, weak spells and a disappointing total skill advantage.
On to the Bard then. They are the only arcane class that let you develop Diplomacy as a class skill, which is strange, neat and unfortunate at the same time. Their spells are mostly supportive though, hence the class did not quite seem to suit my focus on charisma in this particular build.
So I was left with the Warlock. They get Intimidate and Bluff, which is good. Their spells more offensive than Bard ones, but also aiding player in melee combat. Both a focus on Strength and Concentration seemed necessary.
So there you have it. Bluff, Intimidate and Concentration. Damn well took me long enough to figure that out. I can't tell yet if it was a good idea to get two social skills, but it only cost me one extra (and cheap) point in Intelligence.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 8:37 am
by De_Priester
Tricky wrote:Oh, that was a tough one for me. I think the why might be interesting enough.
I kept restarting the campaign it because I didn't like my builds. I came to the conlusion I wanted excellent social skills for my first singleplayer experience, and somehow not let it weaken me. A focus on Charisma really limits your offensive capabilities, unless you are either a Sorcerer, Bard or Warlock since they draw their magic power from that attribute.
Sorcerers have to get those social skills through cross-class skills and the like, which seemed like a waste. Since they do put that magic to good use, I tried combining them with (prestige) classes that did have the social skills as class skills. That didn't work at all, weak spells and a disappointing total skill advantage.
On to the Bard then. They are the only arcane class that let you develop Diplomacy as a class skill, which is strange, neat and unfortunate at the same time. Their spells are mostly supportive though, hence the class did not quite seem to suit my focus on charisma in this particular build.
So I was left with the Warlock. They get Intimidate and Bluff, which is good. Their spells more offensive than Bard ones, but also aiding player in melee combat. Both a focus on Strength and Concentration seemed necessary.
So there you have it. Bluff, Intimidate and Concentration. Damn well took me long enough to figure that out. I can't tell yet if it was a good idea to get two social skills, but it only cost me one extra (and cheap) point in Intelligence.
This seriously sounds cool, I was actually thinking about getting a warlock as a class (WoW fanatic) but didn't because I feared it would be gimpy. But it would in fact be a nice way to play with these combo skills. Cool idea I seriously need to try it sometime.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:44 pm
by Fljotsdale
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:47 pm
by fable
Fljotsdale wrote:I used Set Trap all the time in NWN - once I found out how fantastically good it was! True, not brilliant early one (but still useful), but later it does LOTS of damage!
I hope it is as good in NWN2 - which I still can't play becaue my machine has not come back yet...
It's good, but it's just unfortunate that traps cost quite a bit. Of course, I haven't had many options to recover traps, yet. Hope I will.