Party Skills and You - bonuses over 10 for taking it yourself.

[TheMageLord]

I've been playing around with the party skills and determining how useful taking them yourself would be. Some are so ridiculously good, while others seem to do nothing. I didn't see any other threads specifically on this, so I figured I would post my findings.

First the bonus for those who don't know: 2 skill gives +1, 5 skill gives +3, 8 skill gives +6, 10 skill gives +10. These are applied to the highest person in the party, either you or your companions. So 8 is effectively 14 if you have the 8 yourself.

And the skills that work:
Trade: Gives a BIG difference in price when you take it to 10 yourself.
0 trade: spirited charger 6772
10 with companion: spirited charger is 5079
10 with yourself (+10 bonus) same horse is 3420
You can sell goods for the same price you buy them, and almost sell armor/weapons for the same price you buy them (minus a couple denars for a 1000+ denar item)

First Aid: So good it could be considered broken. The extra +10 stacks, 5% per point, making it 100% hitpoint recovery. All your companions knocked out? 100% health after the battle. You get knocked out in every wave of a big battle? Not to worry, you're invincible.

Surgery: Same as First Aid in the stacking, 100% recovery rate of injured soldiers. Never lose a man again.

Wound Treatment: Insane regen seems to also stack, 10 men knocked out at dawn, all 10 recovered by noon.

Pathfinding: Huge speed bonus stacks, can move incredibly fast with the extra +10.

Spotting: Viewing distance also seems to stack, can see quite a ways with 10+10.

And those that don't seem to work:
Tracking: Above 10 doesn't seem to do anything from my limited testing. Who would take 10 anyway?
Engineer: Bonus above 10 doesn't seem to register. Companions with 10: 2 hours to make siege ladder, you with 10+10: still registers as 10 and 2 hours.
Looting: Doesn't seem to register on looting villages, not sure if it works on after battle loot or not. More testing would be needed.

A 30 int char with 10 wound treatment/surgery/first aid would be nuts. All heroes would be completely invincible, your soldiers would never die, and your army would recover in less than a day even if it was nearly wiped out. Never have to recruit soldiers again. So unbalanced that I'll have to avoid doing it to prevent the game becoming boring.

The 10 pathfinding is pretty damned tempting, though. My test character (empty inventory, horse, 10 riding, 10 pathfinding) is zooming across the map at 17. I didn't even know speeds like that were possible. 20 spotting is practically a true sight cheat, I'm looking at the Wercheg garrison from Reyvadin.

 

[Al3xand3r]

Fun stuff. I guess this shows they should code a limit of quite a bit lower than 10 to some of those skills. Say, when you boost First Aid to 9 or something it never gives tou the + icon again and says "you have reached the max skill level for this skill" where it could normally say something like "you need X Int to increase this skill" or whatever. Ah, I'm sure you get what I mean.

 

[TheMageLord]

Well, 10 first aid on a companion is only effectively 10. It's the personally taking it bonus that brings it to 20. Maybe the personal bonus should be reduced a bit, maybe to +1 +3 +5 and +8 instead of 1 3 6 10. That way the maximum recovery on healing skills would be 90% instead of 100, so you wouldnt be completely invincible and it would just make you way more durable.

 

[Al3xand3r]

That's still a lot though isn't it? What if the bonus was removed from those skills, would it make them bad? I don't know, I haven't played high level characters too much. Maybe he could just disable the bonus of those broken skills. Either way it needs to be addressed before the retail release, people who buy that won't be as acceptive to it as people like us who know they're getting unfinished and/or test versions like 951. It's good you brought it up

 

[TheMageLord]

Well, then it would be no point in taking it yourself instead of just letting a npc get it. Most people just let npcs get all the party skills, the extra bonus was added in to make taking it yourself give you an advantage. Having a 90% recovery rate for heroes or 90% knockout rate for killed soldiers seems like a good bonus for dedicating yourself enough to get 10 in the skill. It's just the 100% that seems way overpowered, never ever losing soldiers and never taking any lasting damage is a lot different than losing 10% of soldiers and 10% of health when knocked out. Losing 10% of soldiers still means you have to recruit new ones after big battles, instead of getting your army and never ever having to get replacements.

 

[Lyx]

Personally, i like it that there are bonuses (though, i'm not that happy HOW the bonus-system works - i'd like to get rewarded for multiple companions being skilled in one area). I also dont think that the advantage which one gets per skillpoint is inflated. I do however find it questionable, if persons should be able to raise skills that high in the first place. So, in principle i agree with magelord: the fact that we can get "100%" is the problem.

 

[Darian]

Wow, that's amazing! I never realised the bonus system was so utterly broken. It would take a lot of levels to gather all those attribute points though...

 

[Poc]

Still, it'd take a hell of an amount of time to accumulate the necessary stats and such (especially for the companions) without the use of cheats. I don't think it's really broken, per se. It would simply suck much of the fun and challenge out of the game if you actually managed to acquire all those points. You can already eliminate the fun by conquering everything on the map, which can be done legitimately in a much smaller timeframe.

 

[kaeldragor]

I don't consider this broken.  To get to level ten in any of those takes a long while, and that's assuming you put points nowhere else.  I think it is fair to give a large advantage if the player is willing to handicap their combat abilities for it.

 

[Wonderland]

Yeah, sounds about right. Nobodies going to get to those levels without cheating anyways, so if someone actually gets a 10 in any of those categories, more power to them.

 

[TheMageLord]

Upon further testing, the personal 10+10 first aid doesn't apply to you if you get knocked unconscious, only if you barely survive will all your hp be returned. It does make your heroes unstoppable though, since you keep patching them up and they don't lose hp.

I guess first aid is fine really. It's the surgery that seems silly, 0% chance of troop loss? bit overpowered imo. Maybe it should cap off at a certain %, like 90 or 95. Doesn't make sense for a master surgeon to be able to save EVERYONE. I can see maybe almost everyone, but what about the guy who got his head cut off? Just tape that sucker back on and hes fine after a few hours?

 

[sadnhappy]

The 10 pathfinding is pretty damned tempting, though. My test character (empty inventory, horse, 10 riding, 10 pathfinding) is zooming across the map at 17. I didn't even know speeds like that were possible. 20 spotting is practically a true sight cheat, I'm looking at the Wercheg garrison from Reyvadin.

What the.. 17?  Niicee.. But yeah you are right. And even lower surgery numbers do seem to save everyone on your team. I once captured a castle of 300 men or so with just 60 archers.. Just recovered after I took bunch of them out and then attacked again with all in full health.

 

[meatbag999]

Gee.. Thanks. Very useful indeed.

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Heh, what about Heroes skills? I mean, if I got 10 trade and my NPC#1 got 4 trade and my NPC#2 got 3 trade. Do they stack?

 

[Cracka]

Since the game revolves around medieval battle, i don't see much sense in adopting those types of skills, especially trade, the time will come [ sooner than you think] you will have too much money and you have sacrificed all your juicy Attribute and skills points for something that you no longer need. besides the fact that money is still way too easy to make, i find this does negate from the fun of the game.

Personally i would rather kick ass in battle than watch my inept companions get gangbang'ed by 3 peasants while stuck on the edge of the map and having them imediately regnerate to do it all over again, when i can invest all points into combat related skills and perform better than 30 companions even without the regneration exploits.

That's my 1 cent ... sorry i'm saving for a better post.

Good observations though Mage, much of that i did not know.

 

[Ramidel]

Well, remember: if a companion goes down they can't help in the battle, right?

That said, First Aid Mad Skillz=100% regen after every retreat.

 

[TheMageLord]

I find companions and troops to be very handy. Even with mad str and agility it isn't easy to take on 300+ troops without being worn down (in one big fight that is, I keep my battlesize high enough to pretty much end every battle in one fight). Companions outfitted with the best armor, light lance, shield, and warhorse turn out to be very powerful troops. Mine are up well over 300 polearm weaponskill and I can attack a 100 man mountain bandit army and just stand back and let the 4 of them go take them all out. I've even seen them get unhorsed in a big crowd during a large fight and kill off a few dozen troops before going unconscious. They have about 20 in str/agil, its the weapon skills that make the difference.

I find similar things with my char - weapon skills increase attack speed better than agility, and even with lowish power attack I can hack things down in one or two hits. Focusing entirely on combat just isn't necessary, and I find it much more fun to lead a massive army against another massive army than ride around in circles hacking away abusing the poor AI until I kill them by myself.

It's pretty crazy with heroes like that though, with these guys in tow tournaments can be interesting, especially in a 8v8 with all 4 of them on the other team with lances and me left alone 10 seconds into it as a sword and boarder when they cut through my 7 team mates like butter. High polearm skill AI can do some goofy stuff with those lances, even unhorsed they can hit for 100+ in a quick tiny jab that shouldnt even hurt you.

 

[armagan]

First the bonus for those who don't know: 2 skill gives +1, 5 skill gives +3, 8 skill gives +6, 10 skill gives +10. These are applied to the highest person in the party, either you or your companions. So 8 is effectively 14 if you have the 8 yourself.

Ooops. That would be a bug. The intended system was: 2 skill gives +1, 5 skill gives +2, 8 skill gives +3, 10 skill gives +4. However, the bugged system looks interesting as well.

 

[mfberg]

I could see a bonus system based on character and companion skills (Your trade + your companions highest bonus). That would make having a bonused companion much better.

mfberg

 

[Tzsak]

I personally like to maximise my party skills first. Having invincible troops is awesome = D

What is irritating, however, is that surgery doesn't work when you don't fight yourself (as far as I can tell).

 

[cliffjeff]

this doesn't sound broken to me, and makes me consider making a new 'support' player... usually, I gimp all my heroes by making them take care of party skills, but if I do all the party skills myself, the heroes might actually make decent warriors =P