Skill point retraining

[salmag]

I think Skill respecs should be allowed ONLY when they Introduce more skills into the game.

Since the odds of that are slim to none...

well...

[Vormaerin]

The OP has one level of bard and enough Perform skill to use his eligible songs effectively at the moment (ie 1-4). There has been no sane reason for him to be buying it up cross class any time prior to the upcoming patch, as it did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So telling him he should have been maxxing perform out is silly. If he'd done that and you found out about prior to the WDA info, you'd have laughed your behinds off at his noobness and you know it.

Regarding respecs on skills.. I wouldn't mind if they gave out single use respect tokens to all characters that exist at the time of a major change to skills. But I think that the ability to continuously respec things like feats and skills is, overall, a bad thing. I really despise the builds that say things like "Take this until later, then swap it for that". Ugh. I've swapped feats that turned out not to do what I thought they would do, but that's it.

[Cyr]

/signed

As for the tome issue...we should be retroactivly getting those points back also. Why is it a great thing that a character made when +2 tomes are drop unbound should by definition be better than a character created before this?

[bobbryan2]

I think Skill respecs should be allowed ONLY when they Introduce more skills into the game.

Since the odds of that are slim to none...

well...

Uh? Why do you believe that?

Is changing the usage of a skill not sufficient?

Here's the arguments I see on the forums:

"The skill is called BALANCE. Obviously it had to do with balance. If you wanted a character to have good balance, you should have trained it all along."
"But it didn't DO anything."
"It was called Balance!"

or

"The skill was called Perform!"
"But all the skill actually did was make it so I could sing a song at a given level, and all I wanted to sing was facinate"
"Well, you're obviously too stupid, so I'm not going to argue with you any longer."

Apparantly, there's a subset of forum posters that believe we should be Psychic character-builders. I mean... the skill is called Repair... so obviously that should let us build golem dogs to fight for us?
After the fact, if it were changed, it would make perfect sense. But it doesn't mean we can guess what applications are going to be put into the game.

[Zenako]

Ok quick reality check here on the character with one level of Bard.

Assuming you put the 3 ranks it required into the Perfrom Skill you are running around with 1 Fascinate and/or 1 Inspire Courage per rest. (Unless you also took the Extra Song Enhancement which would give you a total of 2/rest). All higher order songs require more Levels of Bard and more Ranks in skill. Clearly the Bard part of the build is not a major aspect of the character, perhaps some flavor on top. Your song only lasts the base period of time as well. Since there is no roll now or in the future for the Inspire Courage boost, that is unchanged. Fascinate will be affected (as it should have been from the beginning) BUT do a little checking and see how it might still be somewhat uber in its effect. While pure core bards are looking at 95% success, you may still be looking at some seriously high DC's anyway. Pure Bards will be having DC's in the 50+ range (My CHA Bard 19 ranks, +12 CHA, +15 item is 46 before any spells or buffs or anything else kicks in) ...while you might only be able to hit something in the 30's. How many mobs are going to still be saving anyway?

[rimble]

Actually there is a technical reason to not allow skill point respec.

The use of int tomes to increase skill points per level... let me explain.

It's not worth obsessing over. Let them have their +2 Int from level one. Then the effects of that tome would be fully retroactive just like every other tome. It's a good thing.

[rawfocat]

BUT, if You just use the total of all RANKS earned and reassign the same number to different skills, it wouldn't matter when You ate any INT tomes, and takes care of problems with cross class skills, as well.

This method would work for a pure class character, but for a multi-class it would be an issue.

Take a 8 ftr / 8 cleric alternating each class (example 1 ftr then 1 clrthen 1 ftr ....) who ate an INT tome at level 7. In the skill respect, which skills are cross class and which are class skills.

[Zenako]

This method would work for a pure class character, but for a multi-class it would be an issue.

Take a 8 ftr / 8 cleric alternating each class (example 1 ftr then 1 clrthen 1 ftr ....) who ate an INT tome at level 7. In the skill respect, which skills are cross class and which are class skills.

Bingo, I suspect that this a large part of why we have not seen any hints of anything like a skill respect coming along. Tomes are one thing, but skills and cross class skills are another as well. I suspect that if their database had a viable archive/history for each character, instead of a static snapshot of its latest state, then something would be more possible.

Now IF they decided to make things like INT Tomes retroactive with respect to skill points, then things become a bit easier to manage. To keep some things more game balanced then they might also want to introduce ML on tomes as well then. Perhaps lvl 4 for +1 tomes, Lvl 8 for +2 and lvl 12 for +3.

[bandyman1]

Bingo, I suspect that this a large part of why we have not seen any hints of anything like a skill respect coming along. Tomes are one thing, but skills and cross class skills are another as well. I suspect that if their database had a viable archive/history for each character, instead of a static snapshot of its latest state, then something would be more possible.

Now IF they decided to make things like INT Tomes retroactive with respect to skill points, then things become a bit easier to manage. To keep some things more game balanced then they might also want to introduce ML on tomes as well then. Perhaps lvl 4 for +1 tomes, Lvl 8 for +2 and lvl 12 for +3.

But I'm not so sure that they don't. The game knows exactly what level you were when you took certain feats, and weather it was a normal level up feat, or a fighter class feat. That's already part of the respec tech, we DO have. So the order in which you took certain classes has to be recorded. If they already know such things about our characters, I'm not sure how skill respecs shouldn't be possible.

[Rastamage]

Ok quick reality check here on the character with one level of Bard.

Assuming you put the 3 ranks it required into the Perfrom Skill you are running around with 1 Fascinate and/or 1 Inspire Courage per rest. (Unless you also took the Extra Song Enhancement which would give you a total of 2/rest). All higher order songs require more Levels of Bard and more Ranks in skill. Clearly the Bard part of the build is not a major aspect of the character, perhaps some flavor on top. Your song only lasts the base period of time as well. Since there is no roll now or in the future for the Inspire Courage boost, that is unchanged. Fascinate will be affected (as it should have been from the beginning) BUT do a little checking and see how it might still be somewhat uber in its effect. While pure core bards are looking at 95% success, you may still be looking at some seriously high DC's anyway. Pure Bards will be having DC's in the 50+ range (My CHA Bard 19 ranks, +12 CHA, +15 item is 46 before any spells or buffs or anything else kicks in) ...while you might only be able to hit something in the 30's. How many mobs are going to still be saving anyway?

I did take the extra song enhancement. Ordinarily I just used Inspire Courage as it rarely seemed necessary to use Fascinate. I've read good things about it, though, so I did want it as an option.

I have to disagree with you about the bard level not being a major part of the character. My bard-dipped mage played totally differently to the vanilla sorcerer and wizard I had played prior. Wands, UMD, etc all made the character play vastly differently for only one level.

Your point about the save DCs may be valid. I, however, prefer to keep mine as high as possible. Since, as a wizard, I have skill points to blow anyway it really isn't impossible to keep Perform maxxed.

Anyway, I decided that I'd done it before for lesser reasons so I rerolled last night. Back to WW and STK I go!

[Reisz]

Actually there is a technical reason to not allow skill point respec.

The use of int tomes to increase skill points per level... let me explain.

Unfortunatley when you use a tome the game does not record what level you were when you used it. Instead it simply records that you used it.

That means that, for example, you character doesnt use a tome until level 12, and then uses a +2 int tome. Well that int increase will give you more skill points per level, but only from level 12 (when you used the tome) onward.

If you then let that player respec his skill points the only way the game can allow that, since it doesnt know WHEN you used the tome, is to give you the benifit of the tome right from the beginning. That will give you a BUNCH more skill points over the levels 2-11 when you didnt benifit from the increased int.

Furthermore I dont really like the idea of feat respecs... but unfortunatley when you add new feats you pretty much have to let players change them out. So by that logic I would only support skill respecs if/when they add new skills to the game. This is also Turbine's position on the issue... they will not add skill respecs until they decide to add new skills to the game.

The game records when you take feats, they record how many skillpoints you have, what you spent them on, and at what level. They have drastically changed skills like perform, intimidate, diplomancy, bluff, etc... greatly affecting their importance or usefulness. They are essentially 'new' skills.

[rawfocat]

But I'm not so sure that they don't. The game knows exactly what level you were when you took certain feats, and weather it was a normal level up feat, or a fighter class feat. That's already part of the respec tech, we DO have. So the order in which you took certain classes has to be recorded. If they already know such things about our characters, I'm not sure how skill respecs shouldn't be possible.

I believe a dev previously stated that they do not CURRENTLY store that information. I would agree that it is possible, but it would probably take a longer time to implement. Additionally they would only be able to capture tome usage for new tomes used not old ones. This would make someone mad somewhere, however they implemented it.

IMO, I think they should just allow the respect and make the tome apply to level 1 on. Sure some people would abuse the system, but the average respect for a tome that upped the INT mod by +1 would only be 16 more skill points in the worst case (a 16 who eats a tome at level 16 then specs) In the most extreme case (a 16 who eats a +3 tome and get a +2 to the INT modifier) they would get 32 extra skill points.

I do not think this would be game breaking or exploitable and any twinked player can already manipulate feats and enhancements after tome usage and no one seems to care.

[oronisi]

I posted this in the update forum but was told it fit better here:

With the recent change to bardic music and the Perform skill I think the time is now for a way to redo skill point allocations. Every other aspect of character design can be updated except skill points and ability scores. It seems fair to me that if you can change feats you should be able to redo skill points as well.

I am currently playing a bard/wizard 1/10. I've enjoyed the benefits of my bard level immensley. Now my bardic music has been nerfed and there's nothing I can really do about it aside from taking another (unwanted) bard level or rerolling. The PH2 allows for retraining and DDO has implemented a system for sorcerer spells, feats, and enhancements. It seems fair, particularly with the new change to Perform that we should get a method to revamp our skill points. Thank you for your time.

How is it now time to update skill points, and not when they messed with balance, or trap DCs, or capped jump (I think), or adjusted tumble, or changed wand DCs (It's been so long but I think they did jack them up early on), or made bluff useless, or are now changing how intimidate works, or scaled damage so high concentration didn't matter, etc etc?

I think if a skill respec was needed, it should have been done a long long time ago. They said no then because it was too hard, and I'm guessing they will say no again, because coding didn't become easier overnight and putting performance in the same boat as all the other skills doesn't really change things.

[Reisz]

How is it now time to update skill points, and not when they messed with balance, or trap DCs, or capped jump (I think), or adjusted tumble,

Return on investment. Turbine needs to prioritize work. All of the previous modifications made x number of people unhappy. These new modifications will make y number of people unhappy. When x+y = too many unhappy people, Turbine needs to do something.

My guess is that we are not there yet. But if more skill tweak happen and more complaints arise from the player base. They will take notice.