It seems to me that some of the classes out there that aren't divine oriented might want to look at possibly dropping a few points over here, like Bards and Gadgeteers. Due to the fact that these two classes, and to a lesser extent Sammies, go through Stamina in the early game like it is going out of style using instruements and gadgets even with good vitalities (in the 60 to 70 range). Considering Piety also ups your base Stamina, it might not be a bad idea to either go with Races that have decent starting Piety (45 - 55 range) or even placing a few starting points in the direction.

While I don't advocate pushing Piety up to 100 as a non-divine spell caster, it wouldn't hurt to atleast bump it up a little as the few points added (about 10 to 15) seem to help out quite a bit in the long run.

I'm too busy boosting Dex/Str/Vit at the start. Since both Str and Vit also add to Stamina, AND carry, (and many combat stats and HP, resp.) and Dex is the first Att i max in almost every char, there's usually not much game left by the time i get around to Pie. (plus, with Robes and Helms, i usually have enough Stamina with around 80 Vit anyway)
And as to Divinity casters, Pie only helps learn faster and has no direct effect on casting. So, sorry to say, it'll continue to be totally neglected by me.

Scatter, you missed that Pie also gives you spellpoints.

I've never worried about running out of SP once i'm past L8 or so--first Mana Stones, then Robe or Helm; and Piety still doesn't matter.

Piety should be secondary choice for other non divine spell casters because of the SP. And i've never underated Piety, it's extremely useful.

The more I look at it, the more I'm with Scatter. For casters, I put their primary attribute first (Wiz/Int, Priest/Pie, Alc/Dex, Psi/Sen, Bishops/Int) and senses or speed second, usually senses. It's just sooo important to get those spells cast early on in the round, much more than the additional spell points Piety gives.
Especially with monks loaded with Senses and Speed, they are practically guaranteed first shot at casting spells for the round (not including wasps, damn those bugs are fast). This allows me to neglect speed for the rest of the group while I haste them.
I agree that Piety is nice, it's just that I think there are other things that are much nicer.

don't forget about Iron Will, which is your power bonus when you reach 100 in Piety.

"A strengthened physical and mental will that increases the character's resistance to such things like magickal spells and side effects of physical attacks such as fear and paralysis."

oh yeah... go into all of your spellcasters' stats, including part-timer casters (monks, valkyries, etc.). go to the 3rd page and r/click on any of the spellcasting realm subdivisions (fire, water, air, earth, mental and divine).

see what they all say?

"controlling attributes: intelligence and piety"

V***V

[ 04-27-2004, 04:48 AM: Message edited by: vesselle ]

Controlling Attribute determines only how quickly you get Skill increases. If you practice much, that becomes unimportant.
When the game first came out, a lot of folks did a lot of testing, and though i don't remember the exact results, i do recall that nobody, myself included, was impressed at all by Iron Will.

I personally do not use mana stones or other mana recharging items which have charges as during combat you use a round with them. I rather dump points into piety at level ups for specialist casters. (along intelligence and speed of course). And I go to get the mana regeneration items as soon as Ferro starts selling them.

About Iron Will: in solo it might be helpful. But I too am not impressed with it.

Thing is, I'm not talking about Piety on spellcasters though, I'm talking about Bards and Gadgies specifically.

As we all know, Int is basically useless to raise on these two classes as the Int bonus skill is set towards offensive spells casting. Likewise, these two class eat stamina by using their spell items (instruments and gadgets). As such, they both could be helped by an initial dose of Piety along with Str and Vit to be a nice starting base Stamina.

Think of it this way, after choosing your class you have 30 attributes to distribute (10 maximum per attribute). In effect, if a Bard or Gadgie then distributes those 30 points as 10 to Str, 10 to Pie, and 10 to Vit, that is an additional 21 Stamina at level 1. This gives the Bard and Gadgie quite a nice stamina pool to help deal with some of the things they may encounter.

Likewise, the Sam could benefit as well from the additional 5 to 7 stamina per level to drop an additional 5 to 10 points into Pie as well as the Sam seems to go through stamina faster than most the other hand to hand oriented classes (probably because they are typically wielding two swords while other wield either single weapon or a light weapon in the off hand).

[ 04-27-2004, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: Argonnes ]