Skill distribution around you and party.

[Rivello]

Im creating this topic to discuss about the bests choices of skill manegement...
I havent founded any topic like this, so I`m creating. (I hope this is the 1º one)

Im kind new in this game and Im using a strategy (probably wrong) based on Investing all in Personal Skills and Leader Skills.  and letting all the Party skills just with some of my heros.

my example:

Me - Full in combat skills and Leadership (seems to be important).

Rolf, Matheld and Nizar - Only combat skills.. my warriors.
Lezalit - Trainer / Combat
Artimenner - Engineer / Tactics
Borcha - Tracker (all in path, track, spot)
Marnid - Medic (all in surg, wound, first aid)
Katrin - Trader / Looter

As you can see my party is half for combat, half for ALL the party skills.

What do you all think about it?
Whats your strategy?
and it really worth "wasting" point in charisma and inteligence for Leadership and Persuasion?

Cya all

Edit - Im also thinkin about putting all remaining points of me and my warriors in TRAINER.

 

[Durandal]

Sounds like a decent plan. This is a good structure to work from. And the idea of throwing tons of points into trainer for your brawlers is also good.

 

[mouthnhoof]

Once your companions get into their teens, start filling their trainer skill. It will do you more good than any other fighting skill they may have. Just remember that trainer is an intelligence skill, so your medics and engineers have the highest potential as trainers.

Your non-combat skills:
Leadership - is a kill you must have if you plan on a large army. The wages will bring you down if you don't.
First aid - a very useful skill that will reduce your down time since it heals you after every combat phase. Most of the skill will come from your medics, but having some points in it as well give you two advantages: 1. If your medics are knocked out their skill will not be in effect. You however are always effective with this skill. 2. You get a bonus in addition to your main medic skill (+1 when your skill is between 2-4, so try to put at least 2 points there).
Surgery - in a similar way to first aid, if you want to reduce the casualties after a major bloodbath where your medics were knocked out. It is extremely important that a character with high surgery is left standing when the battle is over. I usually have two companions with this skill and a few points in there myself. Your engineer is a good candidate to be the second one since he will have lots of skill points due to the high intelligence.
Tactics - This is not very important early on, when you do mostly open field battles, but when you start sieging castles and cities, you will be outnumbered and this skill will help you a lot. No need to fill it up, just throw in a few points to give a bonus to your main tactician and make it easier on you in case he takes an arrow in the eye.

I consider prisoner and inventory management silly skills, especially since they are leader-only. I just export-edit-import and fill them up and I don't even think of it as a cheat.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Ymira: Wound Treatment, Surgery, First Aid
Klethi: Looting
Deshavi: Tracking, Pathfinding, Spotting
Katrin: Trade
Matheld: Engineering, Tactics

Any excess points go into Trainer. The rest of the NPCs have one party skill each (to have some redundancy in case one of the girls gets knocked out), Trainer, and combat skills.

 

[Rivello]

and what about the "limits" of the skills?
I mean, Ive heard that "Tracking" skills above 4 points is useless, that Tracking dont need more than 4 points to work well.
Is there any other skills as "Power Draw" is? (like the limit of bow req. +4 of PD?)

How usefull you think investing 10 in Horse Archery or other combat skills is?

 

[Birger Jarl]

How usefull you think investing 10 in Horse Archery or other combat skills is?

All the "Power X" skills are well worth it, since they don't stop adding bonus damage after a certain threshold.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Well unfortunately the most obvious use for the tracking skill has not been implemented by the devs, namely being able to see older tracks at higher skill levels. As it is, 1 point gives you nondescript grey tracks, 2 gives you tracks color coded by how recent they are, and above that you can see who left the tracks and the estimate of the number of people gets more accurate, but that's it. But even with just one 1 skill point invested you can see even the oldest tracks.
On a related note, it would be nice if we could click the tracks and the party would follow the trail automatically instead of just going to the bit you clicked on and stopping.

PD is useful all the way to 10 even in Native now thanks to the strong and masterwork versions of bows, which have requirements up to 8.

As far as I can tell, HA does nothing for your accuracy beyond 5. Dunno about damage.

 

[Durandal]

I agree with the horse archery assessment. My bows close to a point weapon (at least in native) with 5-6 points. Has anyone found a use for 10 points in it?

 

[dunnno]

As far as I can tell, HA does nothing for your accuracy beyond 5. Dunno about damage.

I think it does affect damage, and also missile speed.  The posts are from 2005 though, so may not be accurate anymore.  Supposedly, the damage penalty for mounted archery is(was?) 20% - (2.5% * horse archery skill).  The other post says that missile speed is increased with horse archery, but I assume it means it lessens some penalty, rather than literally increasing the base value.  Also I think the skill description itself states that it reduces damage penalties.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

I think it does affect damage, and also missile speed.  The posts are from 2005 though, so may not be accurate anymore.  Supposedly, the damage penalty for mounted archery is(was?) 20% - (2.5% * horse archery skill).  The other post says that missile speed is increased with horse archery, but I assume it means it lessens some penalty, rather than literally increasing the base value.  Also I think the skill description itself states that it reduces damage penalties.

Hm, that damage penalty formula is interesting, HA 8 would cancel it out and above that it actually becomes a bonus. Nifty, though I think I'll content myself with 5 for the accuracy and instead pump PD. Thank you for the links.

 

[Rivello]

Dunnno, these links were really usefull 

Ill change a bit my plan:
Borcha -> Spot, Path and TRAIN (instead of Track).

and now I think im gonna raise Power Strike, Draw, Horse Archery, Weapon Master and Leadership.

Any advices and more discuss about skills are welcome =) thank you all

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Yeah, track is pretty useless. It'd be awesome if it gave you the name of the lord whose party's tracks you're seeing, but it doesn't. It just says "war party", without even telling you which faction they are from (which it used to back when there were only two factions)! Bleh. 

Personally I've found WM pretty useless, you can gain proficiencies just from fighting fairly quickly even without a single point in WM. I'm on day 250-something and I have over 300 archery and 200 two handed.

 

[Durandal]

Personally I've found WM pretty useless, you can gain proficiencies just from fighting fairly quickly even without a single point in WM. I'm on day 250-something and I have over 300 archery and 200 two handed.

Agreed. I never sink any points into it.

 

[MisterBarca]

Personally I've found WM pretty useless, you can gain proficiencies just from fighting fairly quickly even without a single point in WM. I'm on day 250-something and I have over 300 archery and 200 two handed.

Agreed. I never sink any points into it.

It may be useful for companions, as they aren't as proficient at building experience through fighting the way the human player is.

But I am a neophyte, so I am sure someone else has a more considered view.

 

[Durandal]

Personally I've found WM pretty useless, you can gain proficiencies just from fighting fairly quickly even without a single point in WM. I'm on day 250-something and I have over 300 archery and 200 two handed.

Agreed. I never sink any points into it.

It may be useful for companions, as they aren't as proficient at building experience through fighting the way the human player is.

But I am a neophyte, so I am sure someone else has a more considered view.

I don't give my companions any WM either, personally. They'll get to that proficiency level eventually. For the fighters, I'd rather put it in trainer after the ironflesh and power strike loading so that I can make an army quickly. For the intelligence specialists, I keep them out of fights, so I don't care if they can't wield weapons all that well.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

It may be useful for companions, as they aren't as proficient at building experience through fighting the way the human player is.

For me, companions are party skill mules, not tanks. If they have excess points I may put some into PS or WM, but it's very low priority.