need help with IWD II's Skill system

Eric

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Archived from groups: alt.games.baldurs-gate (More info?)

hey everybody, first time poster!

i'm really confused by icewind dale II's skill system and i have the
following questions:
1) what do Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate really do? does my main
character needs them if he has charisma of 18? do the rest of the party
members need them also?
2) from the descriptions given on the game manual, i got the impression that
Alchemy and Knowledge(Arcana) are for the sole purpose of identifying
magical items. then wouldn't an identify spell do the samething? (i wouldn't
wana waste skill points on these then)
3)i don't understand what Spellcraft does at all. is it important to clerics
and sorcerers?

on a side note, IMO the Infinity engine looks really sharp in this game and
the game interface is very much improved also.
 
G

Guest

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Archived from groups: alt.games.baldurs-gate (More info?)

Eric <someone@microsoft.com> wrote:
> i'm really confused by icewind dale II's skill system and i have the
> following questions:
> 1) what do Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate really do?

Check out the IWD2 Quest and Skill Spoiler at:

http://weidu.org/IWD2-QuestSkillList.txt

As a concrete example:

[40ILIUM.DLG] Illium Ar'Ghrenoir Intimidate SkillGT 1
If you do not let us pass immediately, I will call down hail and
lightning on this village in Talos' name. Those not charred into
unrecognizable lumps of flesh will be crushed by hailstones the size of
your head. Do you understand?

[40ILIUM.DLG] Illium Ar'Ghrenoir Intimidate SkillGT 6
You're not going to get a chance to honor it, Illium. In fact, you
won't even get a chance to be punished for dishonoring it. We
*massacred* the goblin army at Shaengarne. Do you think your feeble
band of tundra scavengers is going to stop us?

.... you need an Intimidate skill of 7 or better to be able to say the
"massacre" line to this Illium fellow and convince him to run away.

> does my main character needs them if he has charisma of 18? do the rest
> of the party members need them also?

Your skill should get a bonus equal to (YourStat-10)/2, but I haven't
really checked to see if the engine does that. The character conducting the
dialogue is the one who needs the skills.

> 2) from the descriptions given on the game manual, i got the impression
> that Alchemy and Knowledge(Arcana) are for the sole purpose of
> identifying magical items. then wouldn't an identify spell do the
> samething? (i wouldn't wana waste skill points on these then)

Alchemy identifies potions, Arcana covers everything else. It works just
like Lore in BG2.

> 3)i don't understand what Spellcraft does at all. is it important to
> clerics and sorcerers?

When an enemy casts a spell you don't get to know what the spell is (e.g.,
bull's strength or mage armor) unless someone in your party can make a
spellcraft check. The real advantage of spellcraft in that regard is that
many spells in IWD2 take forever to cast, and with a high spellcraft you
can tell if that orc shaman is casting something useless or something
deadly -- if it's deadly, you can direct all of your efforts to disrupt
that spell.

- Wes