Skill Banking Cap Implications

[Plunger]

I've posted about in the Discord already, but I personally believe that having the skill bank capped at 4 is only going to widen the gap between min/max players and the average player on the server when it comes to mechanics.

Take for example the Arcane Trickster PRC, which requires taking three total classes. If you want to focus on the skills given by the Arcane Trickster, you need to be extra judicious with when and where you take your levels and how you assign skill ranks on those levels. I'm including a graphic below to illustrate this:

Hyperlink (If it doesn't embed)

If you look at the sheet, you'll notice that someone not very proficient with NWN or the mechanics behind it will end up will pretty lacking mechanical skills (You can argue all you want that from an RP perspective none of this matters, but then why bother even investing in skills anyways?), but someone who knows NWN and how to build a character can pretty easily build to avoid those leftover skills and keep them in relevant skills. I understand that the goal is to try and curb powerbuilding min/maxing, but genuinely, this is only going to make the skill gap even larger between them and the common player, which seems like it's the opposite goal of this change.

Just my two cents, if anyone else runs different numbers I'd be happy to look at them too.

 

[Aschent_]

Thanks for the feedback, there will be some impact to skill point allocation with our upcoming updates, more to come on that by end of the month.

 

[Richord]

I think a cap of 4 skill points saved up at maximum is perfectly fine.
Reasons being :
1. It allows for less of a sudden and unrealistic increase in a character's capabilities in a particular skill. Chaddicus Mc Fighterface is likely not going to RP committing himself to many nights of studying ancient magical tomes before going for that 1 level Bard dip for that spellcraft.
2. Even as a somewhat capable powerbuilder myself I do not see how I could abuse the 4 skill point cap and neither have you given an example of said abuse other than Arcane Trickster needing to be extra judicious. But to that I say ...
3. I have enough faith in the overall smartness of the playerbase to think that anyone who's playing this nerdy ass nerd game can figure out how to, if they want to actually go for a very niche PrC like Arcane Trickster, use the 4 points cap to achieve their desired PRC.

 

[NeedForGreed]

I think I agree with Richord, I imagine the reason for the cap was to prevent cheesy dip (yum) which tend to make certain classes less valuable outside of dips. A good example is something like Rogue, which in PWs often gets dipped in for its skills and ignored, making full or primarily rogue PCs unnecessary and feel cheated of their value.

 

[Roman53]

The cap of 4 saved skill points is a rather blunt tool.
If ranks were capped by current class levels, rather than by character level at that point of investment, then there would be no need for the cap on saved points.

 

[Plunger]

The updates come, but I’m not really seeing a change relevant to this beyond lowering the skill ceiling from 18+3 to 11+3/0. Maybe I’m missing something in the update thread, I’ll reply there as well.

 

[NeedForGreed]

The updates come, but I’m not really seeing a change relevant to this beyond lowering the skill ceiling from 18+3 to 11+3/0. Maybe I’m missing something in the update thread, I’ll reply there as well.

I'm not sure if it was intended, but reading your concern, I come away with the impression that intentionally or not the TDN11 update does help with your concern.

Your concern, as stated, is that there can be a gulf between experienced players and inexperienced players. Inherently, lowering the skill cap makes that gap smaller. It becomes impossible to make as much of a gap simply by having more experience.

Additionally, the notes say that certain classes will get special skill bonuses to their necessary skills. That gives experienced players less of an advantage and helps newer players make less of a mistake.

I'm not sure what more would really be necessary, beyond just picking the skills for players so they don't make mistakes. I think anything more than the proposed change is really unnecessary, people should be able to make mistakes and a tiny bit of planning does not seem like too much of a logical leap for any player, new or old, especially since free relevels are given up until a certain point.