Help please on Intelligence

[Krull]

How important is Intelligence? I realise that it's important to magic users and bards but what about, for example, fighters?

The reason I ask is that I saw a post which said that Intelligence was useful for increasing your skills. Was this only for magic users or could my lizardman fighter benefit from it as well? I realise that he has more important skills to raise first, but just curious.

Sorry if it's a lame question.

Thanks.

[el_kalkylus]

When you right click on a skill, you will see a window popping up. This window shows the controlling attributes for that skill. So the higher controlling attributes you have, the higher the skill will raise.

A fighter for example doesn't need intelligence because the only thing worth increasing is dualwielding and close combat, but with 25% bonus to close combat, it can get away with low intelligence and low senses.

Intelligence does nothing more than being a controlling attribute. The resistances may increase a little, but it's not by much.

[otter]

Yah, anything you wanna learn faster that has Int as a controlling factor. Designated Casters, other than for Priest (Divinity), benifit much from the Powercast skill (accrued upon maxxing Int), but if you do any practising, Int becomes less important otherwise. I invest in Int only if i have a Bishop along.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

The way I do it -

Vitality I always raise, till it hits 100, for 3 points.

Then 3 points on the other main stat (for example, INT for mages, WIS for priest, STR for fighters, etc) until they reach 100.

With those two stats maxed out, I then begin upping then next highest stats to reach 100.

[Gimli]

Why Vit first? I pretty much would raise that only after the first 2 (or 3) stats I worked on were maxed out. Especially for say a Fighter who gets tons of HP anyways.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

Vitality first, especially for casters (or anyone who can't wear good armor) along with their main other stat (whether it be intelligence, wisdom, speed, etc) - this is because Vitality gives hit points. There are spells, that even your best magical defenses won't protect you against - whether it be psionics maybe (driving a party member insane - especially a fighter with Bloodlust or a Rogue who backstabs 5 times a round). If your mage or priest gets picked out as the lucky target of your insane member - you can usually kiss their arse goodbye before too long. So I get Vitality to 100 to get as many Hit Points as I can for all my characters.

So for example, it's:

3 STR, 3 VIT for my fighter and Valk
3 DEX, 3 VIT for my Rogue
3 SPD, 3 VIT for my ranger
3 WIS, 3 VIT for my priest
3 INT, 3 VIT for my mage

Until the skills are maxed. So for example, I hit 100 VIT for my fighter... I would then begin raising 3 STR, and then 3 whatever the next highest STAT is (that makes sense - so no INT or WIS in case of the fighter, but maybe DEX or SPEED or whatever).

[Wereboar]

Vitality first, especially for casters (or anyone who can't wear good armor) along with their main other stat (whether it be intelligence, wisdom, speed, etc) - this is because Vitality gives hit points.

I have a high-level party which contains only of 5 pure spellcasters. Vitality was stat #4 for most of them (5th for psionic). First int for powercast and pie for spell points. Then dex for reflexion. And then vit, since additional hit points are useful, but iron skin isn't important.

[Gimli]

Still your pure casters are going to have pretty poor hit points even with a high Vit. And there are spells/tactics that I would prefer using to avoid being damaged over raising Vit. Things such as stone skin, guardian angel, party formation changes, etc. Like if someone goes insane and no one can cure it with a spell, walk every combat round so that no one will have enough movement left in the round to attack. Better yet take out casters before they get the chance to make you insane.

I usually go with str/dex first for fighter types and int/dex first with mage types. But pretty much anything will win so there's no best way.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

You're right, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to really go about it. Especially as I play my party until everyone's got 100's across the board maxed out.

[otter]

I had one party i thought i'd take to L50, just because that's the game limit, but i got tooo bored around L38, and they only had 4 Attribute maxxes each, i guess i don't have that much patience. I like to max 2 or 3 things while slowly building others. It all depends on the class-race mix, and i like to get everyone Reflextion as early as i can, i also use the stealth plan, so mine are very hard to hit, and Dex helps combat directly, so it has more value to me altogether. I usually have a "designated haster" who builds Speed right away, a Felpurr Bard, for example, can speed everyone up by 50 or so, and with Snakespeed this can give the entire party first shot first round, if they have even 50 Speed and Sen.