What's athletics useful for?

[Darklord]

See it depends how you define "bad".

Is Athletics flavourful? Yes.
Does it give useful attribute increases? Yes,
Does it help you survive? Yes.

Just because it may not be "optimal" does not make it "bad".

Daniel.

[stepsongrapes]

See it depends how you define "bad".

Is Athletics flavourful? Yes.
Does it give useful attribute increases? Yes,
Does it help you survive? Yes.

Just because it may not be "optimal" does not make it "bad".

Daniel.

The biggest problem with Athletics isn't that it is sub-optimal (which it is). Rather, it adds no flavor to the gameplay. It's all passive, subtle buffs. For example, it doesn't let you equip certain types of items, doesn't give you any new abilities or specials, anything like that. Even some non-combat perk would be welcome. A support skill line could add a chance to help spot a secret buttton (e.g., a glow effect) or give some chance to double up an herb item that is picked up.

D&D realized a long time ago that leveling up with just the benefit of a few more hitpoints and THACO is plain old boring. Hence perks and such. Athletics falls back into the category of just plain ol' stats. So when you pick athletics, not only are you getting suboptimal performance, you're doing so with no trade-off in gameplay flavor or enhancement. Many people take funky, suboptimal builds for the fun of it. There's no fun in an athletics build.

[Empyrean]

See it depends how you define "bad".

You'd have to redefine "bad" for Athletics to not qualify.

Is Athletics flavourful? Yes.

What? How? It's about as flavorful as tofu mixed with styrofoam. It gives you no options that you didn't have before. It unlocks no strategies or abilities that the player can exploit, or special moves in combat. It's just generic stat bonuses, and they're not even focused on anything in particular so it doesn't even distinguish your character that way. It's as bland as skills can get.

Does it give useful attribute increases? Yes,

Other skills do this too. You're not thinking in terms of opportunity cost. Sure, Athletics would be nice if you didn't have to pass up on better skills to put points in it, but that's not how this game works.

Does it help you survive? Yes.

You're still forgetting opportunity cost. Points in Armor will do more to help you survive than points in Athletics, and the difference between the two is great enough that you can spend the leftover points in weapon skills and end up better offensively and defensively than if you had put points in Athletics.

Just because it may not be "optimal" does not make it "bad".

It's strictly inferior to other options. That's what makes it bad.

Suppose that at each level up you have an option to increase offense by +3, defense by +3, or both offense and defense by +1. The balanced option is bad because you could get better results for a more balanced character by simply alternating between more focused options rather than choosing the generic "better at everything" option. That's the problem that plagues Athletics.

[Hissssa]

I'm going to try this one more time....

You can give the front guys athletics AND armor to make them the best possible tanks. Then you can have the back guys specialized to deal 75% of the damage or more.

Hey guess what that actually IS pretty optimized... but it just happens to be different from what you like.

[stepsongrapes]

I'm going to try this one more time....

You can give the front guys athletics AND armor to make them the best possible tanks. Then you can have the back guys specialized to deal 75% of the damage or more.

Hey guess what that actually IS pretty optimized... but it just happens to be different from what you like.

How so? Even for a full defensive build, you're better off maxing out the armor line than trying some sort of 50/50 skill point distribution. If you mean max out the armor line and then sink a handful of leftover points in athletics, okay, but that hardly makes athletics useful.

At best, a reasonable argument can be made for going athletics up to 5 with a skilled character build from the get go to squeeze the most out of that +2 to vit. After that, a defensive build gains a lot more by just piling it into armor. Revisiting athletics before finishing armor just isn't that hot.

[Hissssa]

You can get a lot more health by going into athletics first for the stat bonuses and then going to armor. You would see a big difference if we could easily get up to say level 26 or higher in the dungeon. Athletics made my guys eat less, be able to carry more (which is important but I won't get into that as I had some RP moments in this game that you probably didn't), gave them better stats and in the end it works just fine for my party build.

Honestly I think they didn't weight the higher levels of any skill properly. Most games make max level skills cost a lot more points than lower level skills. Compare this game to something like Guild Wars where every rank in a skill makes the next rank cost more points because the skill becomes far more powerful with more points invested.

Imagine if you got more points per level but higher skills cost more points. So you might get 8 points per level, but after level 16 every skill costs 2 or more points. As you might imagine going all the way in one tree would eat up all of your points... or you could diversify and have three or four skills around mid level.

[Darklord]

some of us like it, some don't, I can't see either convincing the other on this. Think we'll have to agree to disagree.

Daniel.

[Empyrean]

I'm going to try this one more time....

You can give the front guys athletics AND armor to make them the best possible tanks.

You realize that you end the game at level 13 or 14 unless you spend a lot of time unnecessarily grinding, right? Putting all of your points in Armor makes your guys better tanks than splitting your points between Armor and Athletics.

Hey guess what that actually IS pretty optimized... but it just happens to be different from what you like.

some of us like it, some don't, I can't see either convincing the other on this. Think we'll have to agree to disagree.

Stand back, everybody! I'm about to do MATH!!!

Assuming four skill points at level one (either a Human character or a Minotaur with Skilled) here is a comparison by level of the defensive gains accumulated from each skill. I'm stopping at level 14, which is generous considering I beat the game with level 13 characters in my party playing through normally.

Level 2
Athletics: +10 HP
Armor: +10 HP, +1 Protection, Light Armor

Level 4
Athletics: +12 HP, +2 Dex
Armor: +20 HP, +1 Protection, Light/Heavy Armor

Level 6
Athletics: +14 HP, +4 Dex
Armor: +35 HP, +3 Protection, Light/Heavy Armor

Level 8
Athletics: +28 HP, +4 Dex, +10 Fire/Cold Resist
Armor: +50 HP, +3 Protection, Light/Heavy Armor, Shield Expert

Level 10
Athletics: +32 HP, +4 Dex, +10 All Elemental Resist
Armor: +75 HP, +5 Protection, +5 Evasion, Light/Heavy Armor, Shield Expert

Level 12
Athletics: +48 HP, +4 Dex, +10 All Elemental Resist
Armor: +100 HP, +5 Protection, +5 Evasion, Light/Heavy Armor, Shield Expert

Level 14
Athletics: +154 HP, +4 Dex, +10 All Elemental Resist
Armor: +100 HP, +30 Protection, +5 Evasion, Light/Heavy Armor, Shield Expert

What you should be noticing here is that for the vast majority of the game, Armor gives you about double the HP bonus that Athletics does (sometimes more, sometimes less) until the very end when Athletics gets a +100 HP boost and Armor gets +25 more protection. Vitality bonuses to HP are not applied retroactively, so that +2 Vitality bonus you get around level 10 with a dedicated Athletics build really only amounts to three or four more hit points by the end of the game.

Athletics gets about +8 evasion from the Dex bonuses, but Armor gives you doubled shield bonus (which means +10 more evasion from either of the two best shields) and a flat +5 evasion bonus as well, so the evasion advantage goes to Armor. Athletics gets better elemental resistances, but they're not really anything to write home about. If you want to make an "ultimate tank" like you said, splitting your points to a degree where you sacrifice that 50-rank bonus in Armor for the sake of lower level Athletics bonuses is bad.

On top of all this, you get +30 Protection (which is freaking huge), and that's not even getting into the ability to equip Valor Plate. The Armor skill makes you a better tank than Athletics even before you put armor on.

You mentioned splitting points to get an "ultimate tank." Ok, suppose you spend the first ten levels putting points into Athletics to get the most out of those sad little Vitality boosts, and the last four levels into Armor so you can actually wear heavy armor for the last fight in the game. You end up with the following bonuses:

+64 HP, +4 Dex, +10 All Elemental Resists, +1 Protection, Light/Heavy Armor

This build sacrifices effectiveness throughout the entire game (not even wearing light armor until character level 12) to peak at the very end, and it's still not as good as a dedicated Armor build.

At best, a reasonable argument can be made for going athletics up to 5 with a skilled character build from the get go to squeeze the most out of that +2 to vit.

I would say that even that is a mistake. If you take Skilled it gives you +3 skill points. You then spend all three of them, plus two more, to get +2 Vitality. Why not just take Healthy and get +2 vitality to start with, which gives you +5 hit points at character creation and save the two skill points? If you want to get 5 ranks in Athletics to get even more Vitality on top of that then you could do that, but taking Skilled to get +2 Vitality sooner basically just costs you two skill points for nothing.

[stepsongrapes]

I would say that even that is a mistake. If you take Skilled it gives you +3 skill points. You then spend all three of them, plus two more, to get +2 Vitality. Why not just take Healthy and get +2 vitality to start with, which gives you +5 hit points at character creation and save the two skill points? If you want to get 5 ranks in Athletics to get even more Vitality on top of that then you could do that, but taking Skilled to get +2 Vitality sooner basically just costs you two skill points for nothing.

The assumption I didn't state is that you're also probably picking healthy. My "reasonable argument" scenario is going for a maximum defensive build. You also get a +1 strength (a little whoop) and the opportunity to get to the +10 health at Athletics 8, for your last level gain (assuming 50 in Armor). Basically, with 59 skill points to play with and a defensive build plan, it is reasonable to go 5 pts in Athletics at character creation.

[Empyrean]

I would say that even that is a mistake. If you take Skilled it gives you +3 skill points. You then spend all three of them, plus two more, to get +2 Vitality. Why not just take Healthy and get +2 vitality to start with, which gives you +5 hit points at character creation and save the two skill points? If you want to get 5 ranks in Athletics to get even more Vitality on top of that then you could do that, but taking Skilled to get +2 Vitality sooner basically just costs you two skill points for nothing.

The assumption I didn't state is that you're also probably picking healthy. My "reasonable argument" scenario is going for a maximum defensive build. You also get a +1 strength (a little whoop) and the opportunity to get to the +10 health at Athletics 8, for your last level gain (assuming 50 in Armor). Basically, with 59 skill points to play with and a defensive build plan, it is reasonable to go 5 pts in Athletics at character creation.

Ok, I could go with that. Another good skill for boosting survivability is Unarmed Combat. With 42 points, you end up getting +10 Dexterity and +20 evasion. Combined with the Lurker set, it's fairly ridiculous.