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The only comment i have is that you're very likely to finish the game before the 4th Attribute max on most of the chars, and fairly likely before the 3rd, and certainly before the Bonus Skill for those Att's has any noticable development. I've found it much more useful to max Dex first (and asap) with everything but a Bishop, who i usually give Int max first. Then developing the other important Att's equally with the remaining points gives you a more noticable result than trying to activate more Bonus Skills.
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A few more observations.....
- Strength I find strength to a highly valuable stat for any heavily armored character. (Armor gets heavy!) The damage bonuses aren't any laughing matter either. Finally Power Strike is IMHO one of the most valuable expert skills.
- Intelligence Power Cast is a must have for any pure spellcaster in the later game. My Bishop couldn't imagine being without it. If you're not planning for Power Cast than this stat is one of the easiest to ignore.
- Piety I decided that spellpoints were not a priority for the combat oriented members of the group. As for the bishop I decided that I'd make up for delaying piety (bishops start decent anyway) by having a massive number of spells.
- Vitality I generally ignored this stat except to make sure that no character had a vitality so low it became a liability which in the faerie bishop's case it was. I shudder to think what his hps would be if I had not chosen vitality to be one of the first to stats to raise.
- Dexterity I only maxed out dex first on my end on 2 characters: the samurai who was using 2 weapons and trying for as many attacks as possible, and the bard who wanted to learn music and thief skills quickly before she multi-classed. Raising Dex third didn't seem to adversely harm the other fighters of the group. ( No one started with a low Dex ) The Ranger and Monk never had accuracy problems, they had damage problems. The valkryie's problems really only lasted until she got a decent weapon. A big factor in my decision was that I don't view Reflextion as that good an expert skill compared to Power Strike, Power Cast, and Snake Speed.
- Speed I made an early choice to specialize in speed in most of the characters. It worked for me. 5 out of 6 now have Snake Speed, generally attack first, and attack multiple times in a single round. ( The mook bard-fighter is a bit hampered by the giant sword, but oh the damage she is causing.... )
- Senses I put off this stat for all characters save the ranger. The one thing I've noticed is that senses has a much bigger effect on initiative than I thought it would. In addition I suspect that a low starting initiative played a big part in slower close combat skill development in the samurai and valkryie.
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As for the expert skills having any noticable development...... I've got to disagree. My characters at at level 17 ( well except for the bard-fighter's 19 ) and they have already made strong gains in their expert skills.
The Valkryie's Power Strike is nearing 40.
The Bishop's Power Cast has risen at a break neck speed and is currently in the high 80's. ( At the rate he's going he may max it out before level 19 )
Reflextion is around 10 for the samurai and 20 for the bard-fighter.
Snake Speed for the Valkryie is around 10 for the Valkryie, Samurai, Ranger and Bard.
Snake Speed is in the 20's for the monk.
Eagle Eye is almost 50 for the Ranger.
[ 06-17-2004, 09:50 AM: Message edited by: booklord ]