Which skills are worh raising really high?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by khorboth

Assuming a fairly high point-value game, which skills do we think are worth investing lots of points in?

Generally speaking, we see diminishing returns after the 12-14 range unless there are frequently large negative modifiers. So, I was trying to figure out what skills might be worth the extra juice to put skills up to 25 or 30 or higher.

Ritual Magic seems like the most obvious choice. If we're using that magic system, many spells have prerequisite count of 10 and getting skill to 20 has real benefits.

Weapon skills can also clearly benefit. In melee, there are options and there's your parry. In ranged combat, there's range.

So, what else is worth having a skill of 25+‽

Any skill that can act as a cap on your combat skills, assuming it'll see use. Thus Freefall and the various Environment Suit skills, Riding, and Driving are all likely to be useful at the same level as your primary combat skill(s).

It's somewhat embarrassing finding your hyper-lethal assassin now has an effective skill with their weapons of maybe 12 because the other side cut the gravity.

And then there are the skill used for inventions. Unless the character is a gadgeteer (and not all campaigns will allow those advantages) they'll probably be working with huge penalties, so massive skill levels will be really useful - you really, really want your chance of success to be higher than your chance of a critical failure, at an absolute minimum.