In the new backer beta build skillpoints are different. We used to pick them separately in character creation and during levelup. This process worked but it was a little boring and honestly ended up with deciding what skills your character would use at level 1 and then just increasing those as you went.

 

Now skillpoints come from Talents which will have either +2 to a skill +1,+1 to two skills in addition to the properties of the talent itself. With the exception of 5 talents that provide a straight +4 to a single skill which do not have any other properties.

 

I like many others expressed a dislike of this new system in the Quick Impressions thread but decided that I was actually going to see what I could do with it and give it fair shot, its a beta and part of why its here is to give feedback after all. Looking at something decrying its not to my liking and leaving it at that is easy and inviting but unfair.

 

So lets test this, in the only way I know how as an RPG player. Making tons of level 1 ( well, level 5 ) characters.

 

To do so I decided to think up 5 characters, one for each of the skills and associate them with classes that wouldn't normally get that skill through their regular talents. The reason for that is that is to see if its still viable to do so, if the idea of trying to make a character with the skills you choose instead of the skills your talent progression encourages is still viable, and fun. To that end here is a list of characters I'll be building. And then contrasting them with how I think you would build those classes naturally, ignoring skills associated with the talents.

 

A Stealth Fighter

A Mechanics Cipher

A Lore Rogue

A Survival Priest

An Athletics Wizard

 

Why those ? No specific reason, aside from the Cipher and the Wizard these are simply the first things that came to mind. Afterwards I'll write down some conclusions.

 

So lets start, with a Stealthy Fighter.

Edited October 27, 201411 yr by MoonWolf

Lets make a Stealthy fighter. Why ? Because Stealth is useful on everyone, not just rogues. If you want to avoid encounters you'll have to get your whole party past them not just the rogue. Should you want to scout around a fighter actually makes a good choice because if you get caught in a bad spot he is mostly likely to survive untill the party can come in and save his butt.

 

Our stealthy fighter will take the Hunter background for its 1 Stealth. In addition a first level fighter gets 1 Atheletics, 1 Lore, 1 Survival.

 

Stealth Talent Options:

Level 2

Snakes Reflexes: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

Envenomed Strike: 1 Stealth, 1 Survival

Graceful Retreat: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

Stealthy Scout: 4 Stealth

Level 4

None

 

Well we sure have a lot of options here. Lets get the most important one out of the way. I don't like the +4 pure skill talents at all. I do not think that sacrificing the power of a talent is worth another +2 to a skill. And on top of that the +4 skill talents are rather boring. I'm not going to be taking them in any of my builds here.

 

Fighters are about being in the middle of things and throwing down. Even a lighter armored fighter that takes none of the tanky class options is still going to quite the durable character with a lot less of the damage supporting options of barbarians and rogues.  So combining snakes reflexes and graceful retreat plays best into the fighters core gameplay.

 

That gives me a higher Reflex Defense and an improved overall defense when it comes to evading disengagement attacks. I'd say this make me a sort of skirmisher fighter running past the frontline to throw down with the backline using things like knockdown to run inteference with casters or archers. At last that is a coherent character idea.

 

Stealthy Fighter:

Background - Hunter:  1 Stealth, 1 survival

Talents:

Snakes Reflexes: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

Graceful Retreat: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

 

Stealth 3

Athletics 3

Lore 1

Survival 2

 

For our great investment of 2 talents and a background we have ended up with the a character with just as much stealth as athletics plus a smatter of Lore and Survival. Our skills are all over the place and none of them excell. Which is a problem because as far as the beta has let me know I need high values to get good results in scripted interactions and dialogue.

 

The biggest problem though here is that this is your one approach for playing a stealthy fighter. You could also take up Envenomed Strike instead of one of those and gain 3 uses of a poisoned attack per rest. The poison is not impressive. And instead we would have been 2 Athletics and 3 Survival.  And we didn't even really get a good Stealth score out of the attempt. Non melee characters would do even worse with this set of talents.

 

Now lets look at building a tank fighter. You know the type. Sword and board, great at taking a hit does some of damage but nothing exceptional. And for our normal tank build we won't care for skillpoint choices, just see where it takes us. For the background we'll pick one that make some sense for a martial character.  Mercenary sounds good.

 

Sword and Board Fighter:

Background - Mercenary: 1 Athletics, 1 Lore

Talents:

Weapon and Shield Style: 2 Athletics

Cautious Attack: 1 Athletics, 1 Survival

 

Athletics 5

Lore 2

Survival 2

 

Weapon and shield style plays into our weapon loadout of choice and catious attack makes us attack slower but improves our defense. Would you look at that, sword and board fighter pumped Athletics. It makes sense.  I have plenty of other ideas on how to make a fighter. Here is a list with the resulted skills:

 

Two Handed Weapon: High Athletics

Dual Weilding: High Athletics

Mobile Archer: High Athletics

Blunderbuss right int he face: High Athletics

Master of Many Weapons: High Athletics

Flamberge DT bypasser: High Athletics

 

Seeing a trend here ? Worst part is that this is all non fighter talents. Fighter specific talents are also +2 Athletics.  Actually almost all class specific talents are a single skill +2, though there are some exceptions. A fighter that tries to pick skills based on his core gameplay ends up pumping Athletics. Great variety available there.

 

Now I this post was about fighters, but honsetly its not like a Paladin or a Wizard has different options available for Stealth. This is going to be true for many of the other posts about builds coming up.  Stealth is not great, trying to add it to most characters is going to end up with mediocre results

Lets try to build a Cipher with high Mechanics.  The Cipher class skill is Lore and I like the idea of combining it with Mechanics to go for a sort of Animancy vibe.  But just as with the fighter above this will serve to illusrate the full set of possible talents you can take up to level 4 to enhance your Mechanics skill so part of this will illustrate how wanting to pump Mechanics for other classes works out.

 

For a background we will go with Merchant for 1 Lore and 1 Mechanics. The level 1 skill package for picking Cipher is 1 Stealth, 1 Lore and 1 Mechanics.

 

Mechanics Talent Options:

Level 2

Gunner: 2 Mechanics

Accurate Traps: 2 Mechanics

Powerful Traps: 2 Mechanics

Expert Mechanic: 4 Mechanics

Level 4

None

 

Much like the Stealth talents we have 4 options available to us. Luckily unlike the Stealth talents these are all pure Mechanics choices so we can actually achieve a decent rating in the skill.

 

Gunner makes us reload guns faster. Great. Personally I wouldn't put a ranged weapon on a Cipher though I realize some have advocated that idea. The bigger problem with that is that it doesn't lead to anything, the only ranged weapon related talent with Mechanics is Gunner.

 

Lets go witht he trap set. Flavourfull, useful. Perhaps a bit limited in application, I'm not sure how much access there will be to traps in the final game. For the beta this is a horrible set of choices though since traps are basically not available to use in 333. However the most annoying part is that there is no set of options here that work to improve the ciphers core playstyle. I've simply tacked on traps. That is great if you wanted traps. But what if you do not ?

 

Mechanics Cipher

Background -  Merchant: 1 Lore, 1 Mechanics

Talents:

Accurate Traps: 2 Mechanics

Powerful Traps: 2 Mechanics

 

Stealth 1

Lore 2

Mechanics 6

 

 

For our efforts we've actually built a character good at mechanics unlike our stealthy fighter. And we've also discovered the big problem with the Mechanics choices. If you want Mechanics on your character I hope you enjoy putting down traps, with a side of guns. This is your only available set of options.

 

Lets build a Cipher without caring about skills and simply picking talents to boost our core playstyle. The cipher uses weapon attacks to build focus and then uses focus to cast spells. The spells tend to be debuffs with a small selection of damage options also available. We'll build two Ciphers. One focussed on casting and preferring debuffs. Another that goes for more of a spellblade style that tries to do damage with both weapons and spells.

 

 

Debuff Cipher

Background - Merchant: 1 Lore, 1 Mechanics

Talents:

Draining Wip: 2 Lore

Greater Focus: 2 Lore

 

Stealth 1

Lore 6

Mechanics 2

 

Turns out there is no way to boost your debuff spells not with the talent selection open at level 4. So this caster Cipher has a whole lot of focus and the ability to generate it quickly instead. It works, the build is coherent, you end up pumping Lore not a suprise since both these talents are Cipher talents.

 

 

Gish Cipher

Background Merchant: 1 Lore, 1 Mechanics

Talents:

Weapon Focus: 2 Athletics

Biting Wip: 2 Lore

 

Stealth 1

Athletics 2

Lore 4

Mechanics 2

 

Trying to balance the two aspects of the Cipher leads to a combination of Athletics and Lore. Not a suprise really. Picking a differentiation background would have left us with a more coherent skillset too. Its not bad. It makes sense as a combination. If you went all out for weapon based gameplay you would have ended up with 4 athletics from skills. So these are your options if you want to play a cipher that picks skills based on his core gameplay. A balance of Lore and Atheletics depending on how you value those aspects.

 

More choice than the Fighter at least.

A rogue that goes for a lot of Lore, perhaps you are a professional fencer and it represents your knowledge of noble affairs and general upper class  upbringing. Maybe its your ability to appraise the value of loot. Maybe its just because you wanted a rogue main character and think Lore is going to be most useful for conversation options. Rogues have Stealth as their skill on class talents.

 

For a background we will go with Aristocrat, 2 pure points of lore. The level 1 skill package for picking rogue is 1 Stealth, 2 Mechanics.

 

Lore Talent Options:

Level 2

Bull's Will: 2 lore

Dangerous Implement: 1 Atletics, 1 Lore

 

Scion of Flame: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Heart of the Storm: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Spirit of Decay: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Secrets of Rime: 1 lore, 1 Survival

 

Quick Switch: 1 Athletics, 1 Lore

Lore Keeper: 4 Lore

Level 4

Beast Slayer: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

Primal Bane:1 Lore, 1 Survival

Ghost Hunter: 2 Lore

Sanctifier: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

Wilder Hunter: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

 

Finally some options. We got a whole 13 Talents here. Well, sort of. Scion of Flame, Heart of the Storm etc are basically variations on a theme giving increased damage and DT for a damage type. Similarly the level 4 set is all about bonus damage against different kinds of enemy groups.

 

The elemental damage type talents don't do much for a rogue, they are mostly caster talents since casters have much more ready access to elemental damage types. The Implement Talent really is only for casters. Lore keeper is well, a +4 skill talent. That leaves us Bull's Will to make our Will save better, Racial Damage is a bit niche but could word and Quick Switch lets use switch weapon ( or spells in a grimoire ) with less of a delay before we can use them. That is a good deal for a rogue who in my eyes are natural skirmishers switching from ranged to melee as it suits them. So I'll take that happily.

 

Will is probably not a rogues worst save, that tends to be Fort. But raising is not bad idea as such. So lets pick up a boost in Will. It feels a little weird to have Lore on that Talent but I don't want to complain for fear of it being turned into athletics.

 

Lore Rogue

Background - Aristocrat: 2 Lore

Talents:

Quick Switch:  1 Athletics, 1 Lore

Bulls Will: 2 Lore

 

Athletics 1

Stealth 1

Lore 5

Mechanics 2

 

We've succesfully made a high Lore Rogue with talent choices that fit our core gameplay. Thats actually pretty good. To bad its the only possible set of talents that will fit our core gameplay. I mean I guess we can take Ghost Hunter at level 6 and hope there is a lot of ghosts in the game. That is a whole different debate though, see the many discussions on racial enemies in DnD.

 

Lets see what happens if we try to make a more generic rogue build. Or rather two of them. A Skirmishing rogue who dances in and out of combat and a dedicated swashbuckler. For both we'll take the Raider background for 1 Stealth and 1 Athletics.

 

Skirmisher Rogue

Background - Raider: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

Talents:

Quick Switch: 1 Athletics, 1 Lore

Graceful Retreat: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

 

Stealth 3

Athletics 3

Lore 1

Mechanics 2

 

For quickly switching weapons and being able to better avoid disengament attacks we ended up with a balance of Stealth and Athletics. Not really a suprise since at this point we've firmly established that doing things with weapons is Athletics and the Rogue skill is Stealth.

 

Swasbuckler Rogue

Background - Raider: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

Talents:

Weapon and Shield Style: 2 Athletics

Vicious Fighting: 1 Stealth, 1 Athletics

 

Stealth 3

Athletics 4

Mechanics 2

 

Oh hey, virtually the same result we just switched out one point of Lore for Athletics. You won't be suprised at this point when I tell you that a rogue built for backstabbing has a lot of Stealth and a splash of Athletics.

Priests with survival. I'm not sure why but we're going to try and build one.  Priets normally come with Lore on their class talents.

 

For a background we will take Colonist for a solid 2 Survival. Priests start the game with 1 Athletics and 2 Lore.

 

Survival Talent Options:

Level 2

Bear's Fortitude: 1 Athletics, Survival

Cautious Attack: 1 Athletics, Survival

Envonomed Strike: 1 Stealth, 1 Survival

Deep Pockets: 2 Survival

 

Scion of Flame: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Heart of the Storm: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Spirit of Decay: 1 lore, 1 Survival

Secrets of Rime: 1 lore, 1 Survival

 

Potent Potions: 2 Survival

Experience Survivalist: 4 Survival

Wound Binding: 2 Survival

Field Triage: 2 Survival

Level 4

Beast Slayer: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

Primal Bane:1 Lore, 1 Survival

Sanctifier: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

Wilder Hunter: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

 

 

Well we have quite an array of options open to us. And almost all of them are paired with lore or athletics.  The pure ones are Deep Pockets which gives us more quick bar slots, Wound Binding for a self Health restore Field Triage for a smaller Health restore on party members and Potent Potions for improved potions.

 

So the pure Survival talents have a very coherent theme. Healing and buffing. Either by having access to more of it, improving it or giving new options for it.

 

Survival priest:

Background - Colonist: 2 Survival

Talents:

Potent Potions: 2 Survival

Field Triage: 2 Survival

 

Athletics 1

Lore 2

Survival 6

 

Survival is probably the best supported and most coherent skill, that isn't athletics. It can enhance core mechanics of some classes, it can provide all classes with more or better access to buffing or healing or it can grant some extra damage under specific circumstances.

 

Lets build two additional priests shall we. One frontline priest and one more dedicated caster priest. We'll go with  the Mercenary background to pick up Lore and Athletics.

 

Frontline priest:

Background - Mercenary : 1 Survival, 1 Athletics

Talents:

Inspired Flame: 2 Lore

Weapon and Shield Style:  2 Athletics

 

Athletics 4

Lore 5

 

Suprising absolutly nobody trying to make a priest that hits people with weapons and supports from the front line ends up combining Athletics and Lore

 

Support priest:

Background - Mercenary : 1 Survival, 1 Athletics

Talents:

Inspiring Radiance: 2 Lore

Bonus 1st Level Spell:  2 Lore

 

Athletics 2

Lore 7

 

And since Lore looks like its Athletics of casters and Lore is the priest skill a primary caster priest pumps a lot of Lore and picks up some Athletics on the side.

Very nice break down. I figured mechanics and stealth would have the most issues, but it seems like you did well with mechanics. Could be there should just be some more talents, for example, for stealth.

The muscle wizard. Its been brought up by the the developers often enough now. Muscle wizard is going to have a lot of Athletics with his Might stat. It only makes sense.

 

The background of choice for our wizard will be Mercenary for 1 Athletics and 1 Lore, In addition the wizard starts with 2 Lore 1 Mechanics.

 

I'm not listing the Athletics Talents. There is a  a massive amount of atheletics talents. Its likely over half of them. And a good section of those are +2 athletics talents. If you have been paying attention above I actually managed only one character in there that did NOT have any points in it. Its hard to avoid getting at least some Athletics.

 

Here is an Athletics Wizard build, it is not the only one I can imagine. This one is all about causing interupt with all your spells and making your wand attacks more accurate for added interupt when spells are not neccesary.

 

Athletics Wizard:

Background - Mercenary: 1 Athletics , 1 Lore

Talents:

Interrupting Blows: 2 Athletics

Weapon Focus Adventurer: 2 Athletics

 

Athletics 5

Lore 3

Mechanics 1

 

So yes, you can make a wizard build that enhances your core gameplay options, with athletics. You can make a build that enhances your core gameplay options with athletics for every single class.

 

How about another wizard build ? Maybe more caster focused ? How about all one who really likes fire ? Lets start by taking the scholar background for 2 lore.  Its the wizard thing to do.

 

Pyromancer Wizard:

Background - Scholar: 2 Lore

Talents:

Scion of Flame: 1 Lore, 1 Survival

Lesser Invulnerability Spell Heuristsics: 2 Lore

 

Lore 7

Mechanics 1

Survival 1

 

Turns out with blaster focus now either gone or not available yet at level 4 I couldn't really specialize that much in throwing big fireballs. Instead I took a talent that lets me cast defensive spells faster.  Since Lore is the caster skill and Wizards also have Lore as their skill in talents, the combination of investing in spells on a wizard leads to large amounts of lore. Much like in priests.

Right, I know this is already becoming an absolutely massive unwieldy thing but let me just add some sort of conclusion to it.

 

If you do not care about what skills you get you can just pick whatever, this likely leads to a balance between Athletics and whatever your class skill is. That is actually a fortunate side effect of the overabundance of Athletics options. But at least this won't lead to characters with skill spreads that just don't allow them to do anything meaningful at all in dialogue or skill challenges.

 

If you want to actually pick a skill you have two straight up good options.

 

Specialize in your class skill, this will probably work out fine.

Specialize in Athletics, this will definitely work for you.

 

And three options you can make work, but have to accept that its basically got no flexibility in approach or enhancing your class itself.

 

Specialize in Survival, this is a decent option and will make you or your party more survivable in the long term through healing and consumables.

Specialize in Lore, can be made to work for some characters, feels very awkward on others. The vast majority of Lore talents are split with another skill and highly situational or class bound.

Specialize in Mechanics, but accept that you'll just have to be about Traps.

 

Cannot specialize in stealth if you do not get it from your class without taking the +4 straight stealth without other benefits, the skillspreads on the talents simply do not allow it.

 

What do I think about all that ? Well its not as bad as I thought it would be. But its not great either. Having the good options be a specific skill designated to your class or athletics is not going to lead to a great variety of skill layouts. You can make other things work but that doesn't mesh with every class or leads to just being pigeonholed into accepting the only playstyle this gives you.

 

Ideally everything would be as flexible as athletics is now but it would be preferable to just try something completely different that actually encourages choices. This system does not encourage choices it encourages planning ahead and sticking to a course even more than the previous way. If this system is going to be the way forward at the very least the balance of which skills are assigned to talents and in what ratios has to be redone to de-emphasize athletics and give other skills more room.

 

Right. Bring on the comments, questions, suggestions, criticisms.

Nice work!

 

I think the bottom line is that every class can benefit from athletics, as everyone suffers from fatigue. I don't think that this was the reason why they put the skill on so many talents, but I rather think that they did it this way because they tried to assign the most fitting skill to a talent, which most of the time falls back to athletics, because it is so general.

 

Personally, I think that this system is bad as it ties combat to non-combat skills, in contrast to what has been announced way back. I don't think there is a way to make the skillsystem more interesting without tying it to combat skills, but I'd prefer a straight forward system if it means I can freely customize for combat.

 

The big question is whether there are supposed to be a lot more talents to cover up the lacking variety, or if the skills will be reassigned.