Playing AoD: for dummies

[CappenVarra]

Long story short, in the demo several routes can be 100% completed with non-combat skills only. Note they are not necessarily "social" skills (Lore, Trading, Disguise, Sneak...) Purely social skills (Persuasion, Etiquette, Streetwise) and a 10 CHA character can go a long way (play a Grifter or something), but won't make every quest possible. Skill checks are fixed threshold - reloading to re-roll doesn't change anything. Well, mostly, sometimes the checks added a random -1 or +1 in R1 (which is pretty small on a scale of 0-100), didn't check R2.

Which creates the issue of reloading to bump up your skill by 5 or so. Hoping it'll pass. I was kind of shocked that even stealth isn't a toggle skill like Fallout.

Uh, no. The +1 -1 are (or were, i think they removed them after R1) set at the beginning of each playthrough, as to prevent people from pinpointing skill checks at the start of the game. They could go up to +2 or 3 I think. But they don't change on reload, only if you start a new character.

Oh, all right. I didn't check it out in detail, I just took a quick glance at the scripts file and got the impression that a) they're reload-random b) they're quite rare c) they are so small they make hardly any practical difference. If you have the time, could you explain how do you know they're set for each new character? Now I'm curious

The funny thing is, I would like them to be tied to each character, and more prominent / larger in magnitude. I even posted about the exact same thing before (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.ph...release-2-available.71818/page-4#post-2080289)

 

[John Yossarian]

If you have the time, could you explain how do you know they're set for each new character? Now I'm curious

From the official forums. I think galsiah suggested it a long time ago. If you have time, search for his posts there and you might find the thread.

The funny thing is, I would like them to be tied to each character, and more prominent / larger in magnitude. I even posted about the exact same thing before (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.ph...release-2-available.71818/page-4#post-2080289)

I'm pretty sure Oscar (Elhoim here) said they removed them because almost all social skill checks in R2 involve more than one skill/stat, so it's already harder to pinpoint without adding those things.
However, reading the "achievement" threads at ITS it seems to me that they should bring them back because people are already creating lists of optimal playthroughs with min-maxing.

 

[CappenVarra]

snip

Thanks for the info, I did mostly miss out on the discussions on the Iron Tower forums. Guess I'll pay more attention in the future