Skill point economy

[hoshi]

Much like the pre-nerf feylock, the ability to CC AND do full damage at the same time is very powerful, and for very high or very low target ACs (relative to the AB) the cost for a knockdown attempt is negligible.

There does need to be the ability to lock someone down to finish them off and a way for melee to disrupt spellcasting past damage. I'd like to see it done a bit differently but I doubt it will be changed as it has been a staple of the meta for so long.

[godhand-]

I think theres a big misconception about "must have" skills.
To be honest i've actually found once you get over the "i need to have 30 tumble, discipline and x skill" mindset it actually creates alot more versatility in the way your character can be played ( both in RP and Pv*)
I'm currently playing a wizard, and of course i did the obvious rogue levels in epic for skills dumps, but I didn't touch tumble, discipline or UMD with a ten foot pole. Why? Because i'd rather be able to spot/listen for people stealthing, take things like appraise, set/disable trap. Other skills that provide utility to the way i play. I'm a wizard, i've got enough spells i don't need more gear. If i can set a trap that stuns you for 5 rounds, What good is your +6AC anyway?

The reality is as a wizard, 30 tumble ranks for +6 AC isn't going to change a thing for me. I've got 13AC, 21 with tumble if i had taken it. What difference is that going to make for me? any epic is going to hit me and destroy me regardless of the tumble dump. The benefit of a wizard is i can take precautions to avoid them ever being able to hit me.

Playing a fighter and want to kill a wizard? Don't take tumble, Take listen, so you can hear him when he goes invisible at beginning of PVP, You'll still be able to smash him while he's trying to buff! Open your minds! "power-builds" and "high numbers" work against power-builds and high numbers. But they don't take into account Utility.

And over-time i've come to think well played Utility style will beat a powerbuild.

If you're playing a fighter, you're always going to have issues with skills. But if you were to maybe play something that by the numbers is maybe 5-10% less efficient with more utility?? You might just find the utility scales and more than makes up for it.

[TimeAdept]

Listen will not help you find an invisible person.

Your trap does you no good if you're attack before or while you can set it, or if that tumble-having meleer simply makes their save.

Tumble will help you not die in every other situation in the game, including against the aforementioned wizard's summons like Dragon Knight and UMD will get you the Timestop and True Sight scroll you need to kill the wizard.

Tumble is mandatory for any build that intends to be in melee for longer than 18 seconds.

Powerbuilds and high numbers work against everything, including utility. That's just how DnD works - it favors razor edge minmax over "utility" which generally means "jack of all trades". A fighter trading Tumble for Listen isn't making a choice to be utility, it's making a choice to be dead.

[Commie]

That's cold as ice Time Adept but it's the truth.

[SwampFoot]

My rogue's discipline is 1. That's only from his strength modifier. I don't get knocked down because:

A) I don't put myself at the front of a group like a fighter.

B) My general mode in PvP is "run the other way".

C) When I'm stealthing along solo I rarely engage a group that I am unsure of the outcome of.


There's no such thing as a "must-have" skill in this game if you play the skills you have.

[Commie]

What if someone just walks up and knocks you over? Barbarians run faster then you. So do monks.

Also isn't running from PvP ic cowardice? If a friend left me for the wolves as soon as a fight broke out like that, I'd label them a total coward.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

What if someone just walks up and knocks you over? Barbarians run faster then you. So do monks.

I think that's the point. You can't be a good at everything (nor should you). So, why complain about the skill point economy on the basis you should be able to have all the 'optimal' skills + the new shiny ones?

(not insinuating the OP is complaining)

The build philosophy on Arelith - if I can be brave/bold/stupid enough to make such an assertion - is one of mitigation and risk management. You take Discipline to ensure you don't get KD'd, you take Tumble to make sure you don't get hit more, you take UMD so you can nullify CC and other utility, you take Spellcraft for similar effects, you take Taunt so you can hit things, you take Concentration to counter Taunt.

This is all about evening the playing field. You want to have a swiss-army-knife compatibility - in an instant, you can assess the obstacle, adapt readily, and (likely) deal with it. All the best builds on Arelith are the best builds because they can be inherently flexible and still perform better than most other characters.

So what SwampFoot and others are getting at, is rejecting this philosophy and instead foregoing mitigating your weaknesses to just enhance your strengths. Your archer has 1 Discipline, and you're fine with that, and you know you'll get KD'd, so you find other ways to avoid this, or punish your opponents for closing the distance.

You're playing characters that are fundamentally (mechanically) flawed, so you create a new perspective of how to play it. You play up your strengths, and downright try to avoid your weaknesses - instead of mitigating them.

This style of building creates a lot of one-trick ponies, and niche builds - characters that have flavourful and unique composition, and can do odd combinations of things (like a druid/bard). These builds often take more uncommon skills, to reflect that.

You cannot reconcile this playstyle with that of someone who wants all their "essentials" so they can be "optimal" AND take flavourful or fun skills. You can try to balance it, but if people want cake, they have to pay for it.

[flower]

You need discipline or you're going to die.

Discipline's only a must-have because knockdown spam's a thing.

Stop telling nonsence please.

Disarm.

Called shot.

No discipline means you die these the too.

[-XXX-]

Maybe Ambigue wants steal all those sweet MD damask weapons from other people using disarm

[Commie]

Can't be disarmed if you always fight unarmed

[-XXX-]

Well, they can slice off your hands

[Cerk Evermoore]

Nothing like inspecting someone, seeing low discipline and realizing you can just spam knock down a thousand times.

Discipline is a must have unless you want to die in the stupidest creepiest way possible.

[godhand-]

Listen will not help you find an invisible person.

Your trap does you no good if you're attack before or while you can set it, or if that tumble-having meleer simply makes their save.

Tumble will help you not die in every other situation in the game, including against the aforementioned wizard's summons like Dragon Knight and UMD will get you the Timestop and True Sight scroll you need to kill the wizard.

Tumble is mandatory for any build that intends to be in melee for longer than 18 seconds.

Powerbuilds and high numbers work against everything, including utility. That's just how DnD works - it favors razor edge minmax over "utility" which generally means "jack of all trades". A fighter trading Tumble for Listen isn't making a choice to be utility, it's making a choice to be dead.

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Invisible - nwnwiki is a good resource, it helps.

Seven sons of sin hit the nail on the head in terms of what I meant by utility. There is no perfect build, they all have a weakness so find another way to solve that.

So what SwampFoot and others are getting at, is rejecting this philosophy and instead foregoing mitigating your weaknesses to just enhance your strengths. Your archer has 1 Discipline, and you're fine with that, and you know you'll get KD'd, so you find other ways to avoid this, or punish your opponents for closing the distance.

You're playing characters that are fundamentally (mechanically) flawed, so you create a new perspective of how to play it. You play up your strengths, and downright try to avoid your weaknesses - instead of mitigating them.

This style of building creates a lot of one-trick ponies, and niche builds - characters that have flavourful and unique composition, and can do odd combinations of things (like a druid/bard). These builds often take more uncommon skills, to reflect that.

You cannot reconcile this playstyle with that of someone who wants all their "essentials" so they can be "optimal" AND take flavourful or fun skills. You can try to balance it, but if people want cake, they have to pay for it.

[Commie]

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Invisible - nwnwiki is a good resource, it helps.

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Listen

Can only hear invisible creatures within the max attack range.

Aka you can only hear them when they're beating you up for wearing listen gear instead of good gear.

Listen is trash. I'd take virtually any other skill over listen.

[TimeAdept]

nwnwiki is a good resource, it helps.

This only happens if you get within melee range. Having 100 listen will not detect an invisible person 30 feet away. Or 50. Or any amount beyond "Hands in front of your face" range. I played a character with 100 listen and 0 spot for 8 RL years, I am very familiar with its uses and limitations in comparison to Spot and how it functions with stealth.

[Commie]

Seven sons of sin hit the nail on the head in terms of what I meant by utility. There is no perfect build, they all have a weakness so find another way to solve that.

So what SwampFoot and others are getting at, is rejecting this philosophy and instead foregoing mitigating your weaknesses to just enhance your strengths. Your archer has 1 Discipline, and you're fine with that, and you know you'll get KD'd, so you find other ways to avoid this, or punish your opponents for closing the distance.

You're playing characters that are fundamentally (mechanically) flawed, so you create a new perspective of how to play it. You play up your strengths, and downright try to avoid your weaknesses - instead of mitigating them.

This style of building creates a lot of one-trick ponies, and niche builds - characters that have flavourful and unique composition, and can do odd combinations of things (like a druid/bard). These builds often take more uncommon skills, to reflect that.

You cannot reconcile this playstyle with that of someone who wants all their "essentials" so they can be "optimal" AND take flavourful or fun skills. You can try to balance it, but if people want cake, they have to pay for it.

I'm a little confused by this, if you do bard/druid you can just take disc/sc/tumble, so why not just take them?

Why worry about trying to find ways to 'punish your opponents for closing the distance' (I don't know what this means ig in the nwn engine feel free to explain) when you could just take disc, still have whatever plan it is you had to 'punish your opponents for closing the distance' but ALSO not fall over when they get to you?

Why limit yourself to bad skills/builds? There are very very few 28 level capstones that are worth losing disc/tumble/sc and druid (the example given) definitely isn't one.

[Cortex]

How about instead of arguing what skills and builds are better, to stick with the OP's main subject?

[-XXX-]

Okay, first off I'd like to say that essential skill dumps are a thing. Arguing against this means arguing against years of empirically collected data by a large chunk of the player base.

As for answering the OPs question:

What could solve this?

I'd suggest giving skills gradual perks depending on how many skill ranks have been invested (the way tumble or spellcraft works for example) rather than needing to invest certain arbitrary number of skill points in order to "unlock" a perk.

Seeing how this thread coincidentally pops up with the "can ride horses, but need to have 8 ride rank" thing, I'd propose a following alternative:
- each character can mount horses regardless of their ride rank
- each character can summon mount 1x/day, whether the mount actually shows up depends on a ride skill roll (say DC20 or some other number)
- since mounts can be also used as summons, the mount gets stat bonuses for each X hard ranks in the ride skill
- the horse riding reward now counts as 33 hard ranks in the ride skill for characters who have chosen it prior to the change and gets disabled for new characters

[Trunx]

Listen is trash. I'd take virtually any other skill over listen.

Listen is objectively the best detection skill. Spot is only a viable alternative because it also pierces disguises.

[Ozzy.nl]

Ok this might be a odd question here.
But skill dumps in my eyes have always been something done by powerbuilders.
Back in the early days of Arelith this was not a thing.

So when did skill dumping actualy became a thing and a norm?

instead of RP builds?

[Nitro]

Who's to say that a so called "powerbuild" isn't an RP build? A desire to have a mechanically strong character doesn't magically make someone less of a roleplayer.

As for your question, skill dumping has been a part of this server, and any other NWN server for about as long as they've existed. If it wasn't done as much in the past, it probably was due to people being unaware of how it worked.

[flower]

Ok this might be a odd question here.
But skill dumps in my eyes have always been something done by powerbuilders.
Back in the early days of Arelith this was not a thing.

So when did skill dumping actualy became a thing and a norm?

instead of RP builds?

Quite opposite. Skill dump is neccesary to make interesting and felxible builds based around RP.

Without it, you would have to go straight in class levels to get needed sklls. Thus restricting your ability to build.

[Xuuldar]

Quite opposite. Skill dump is neccesary to make interesting and felxible builds based around RP.

First off, I am not advocating either way, but I have to ask. How is a low intelligence Barbarian whipping out an arcane scroll mid rage and flawlessly speaking the incantation to cast a spell based on RP? How is a Weaponmaster that has spent his life training to become a master of his weapon being able to one day all of a sudden whip out a scroll and cast magic that takes a Wizard 15+ levels to learn, based on RP? How is a wizard that has spent his life being pretty much a nerd studying magic to cast spells, one day all of a sudden, able to flawlessly have the combat ability to avoid being knocked down or becoming a master acrobat based on RP?

Wanting to make a build that can survive makes perfect sense, but lets not pretend like it has any basis in RP.

[Nitro]

Quite opposite. Skill dump is neccesary to make interesting and felxible builds based around RP.

First off, I am not advocating either way, but I have to ask. How is a low intelligence Barbarian whipping out an arcane scroll mid rage and flawlessly speaking the incantation to cast a spell based on RP? How is a Weaponmaster that has spent his life training to become a master of his weapon being able to one day all of a sudden whip out a scroll and cast magic that takes a Wizard 15+ levels to learn, based on RP? How is a wizard that has spent his life being pretty much a nerd studying magic to cast spells, one day all of a sudden, able to flawlessly have the combat ability to avoid being knocked down or becoming a master acrobat based on RP?

Wanting to make a build that can survive makes perfect sense, but lets not pretend like it has any basis in RP.

I mean, it's not like it works any differently without a skilldump either. You're just as unable to read a scroll if you're 1 UMD below the limit to use it, as if you were 10 points below it. There's nothing stopping anyone from RP'ing towards learning how to use magical scrolls or keep their feet under them when shoved, and putting points in it slowly over time doesn't make any RP about it on its own.

Building to suit your RP, or RP'ing to suit your build are both equally fine ways to play the game.

[flower]

....

It allows you to get AC without being trash (tumble).

It allows you to build cleric who can withstand melee feats and excel in melee without being dispelled by lesser dispel.

That you have chosen to not see the possibilities and how much flexible it allows for RP building, is merely your choice.

And i really do not get that argument why WM who lives in world overfilled with magic should be unable to learn how TO READ a Scroll and free spell imbued to it. He is not casting it anyway.

But it matters not. NWN is based on sklil dumping and multiclassing, you don't like it? Then go play something else, there is no other help.