What works better, what is useless, General skill chat Options

[DoomedOne]

So it's time for us to ask the great question after some good time playing the game. Is it truly balanced? Is it playable from any angle, or can you screw up by pushing skills in the wrong directions? Is there a standard skill set that works for vitually every character? Are certain skills better used by playing the game the same way (for instance, a stealth vampire better than a fighter vampire?)

I think certain skills are useless, being mysticism and security that I can think of. Other skills can be important no matter what the character, like illusion, marksman, restoration. So it seems if I want a knight he has to major in part to stealth. A stealthy character finds more options in the game than dash and hack, but at the same time does earn kills as fast. Mysticism only had 3 or 4 spells, and they all seem useless. Soul trap can be done just as easely without majoring in it and work as well (seeing as how rare grand soul gems are it doesn't matter if you ecounter them anyway) Tlekinesis is fun but useless as you can't do any harm to the monster. Dispel is useless because of how rare enchanted characters are anyway. When you do encounter them they're barely any more difficult.

Security can be done by just learning the game, and it doesn't make it that much easier when you get into higher levels. You'll still be searching for lockpicks at every corner.

Blade ended up being all powerful but I don't think it has anything to do with the joining of long and short, it's just there's a lot of seductive stuff that comes in blades. War hammers have there own seduction but not as powerful.

[HyPN0]

Ahem......Character creation threads or such.....MY FAVORITE!!!

OK first of all,i completly disagree about your Mysticism comments.When you're a mage you will be probably fighting with ranged magic.That means you will need a ranged soul trap spell.Which,with decent duration,requires at least skill 50.

Next one is Detect Creature spell.For a stealth guy (or posably for everybody else) it's important to know what's behind the corner.When something becomes Invisible you will still be able to fight it and see it if you have a Detect Creature spell.It's important that the spell has good duration and that it covers a large area.That will reqiure higher skill.

Reflect Spell.Useful aganist spellcasters.Very useful.A good one will reqiure high skill.
Reflect Damage:Useful against warriors.As with reflect spell,it's duration and uality will depend on the higher skill.
And Mysticism is easy to develop,which is very good for developing Inteligence.You will want to raise your Inteligence as soon as posible because it isn't retroactive.

Security:Yes it is useless and it's because of the Skeleton Key.Stupid devs.I wasted my skill slot there.

As for useless skills?
Speechcraft - With a 100 Charm spell that has duration of few seconds you can allways keep people disposition at maximum.It requires Illusion skill of merely 25.Speechcraft is nice for raising your Personality though.

Strangely i can't remember any other useless skills besides these two.


To answer the other part of the question:You can hardly screw up.
The game is so easy going that almost anything goes smoothly.If you suck at something you can easyly develop it as a minor.Sure,it will take some time but at the end you will be the same as the guy\chick who picked it as a primary.I will take Acrobatics as an example.I picked Athletics as a primary and Acrobatics as a minor.Right now i'm master at Acrobatics,and i'm not master at Athletics.So there you go.

Actualy you can handle yourself pretty good by chosing one of the pre-made classes,and just about any race.

There are diffrences in gameplay depending what kind of skills are you using.Example:Somebody complained about Ogres on this forum.Ogres are easly beaten with a bow and some pathetic poison maybe.Trolls are very difficult to stealth chars,but i heard people saying they are piece of cake with some fire spells.
Some creeatures are best fought with spells,some with melee,some with ranged weapons a poisons.So i would say it's pretty much even.

This post has been edited by HyPN0: Apr 21 2006, 10:40 AM