Is there a maximum effective skill bonus?

Is there a maximum skill bonus you can get from items / blessings that goes above what your primary stat allows?

For instance, I tried to max prowling on a halfing, +2 prowl from race, +2 prowl from creep armor, +2 prowl from medallion of silence, +2 prowl from ring is concealment, +4 from blessing of Moordinal, and 8 from 2 character character points - for a total of 20 - except it only appeared that I had 12!

Later I noticed a thread about being the master of masters, mastering all skills, and it stated the need for 15 PE. My halfling only had 9 PE. Sure enough, when I increased the PE to 15 I could get mastery.

It seems that no matter how many bonus points you have in a skill, you can only achieve a level just below the requirement for the next break. For example with 9 PE I could only get 11, to get 12 or higher I needed 12 PE. To get 19 for mastery, you need 15 PE though you still can't seem to hit 20 without 18 PE. At least it appears that way on my current character. I've noticed similar confusion when I forget to cast Agility of Fire and look at my backstab skill.

Is this limit correct? Or am I missing something.

 

hmmm, maybe. The heaviest boots I recall wearing are either fine boots (+8 DR, nothing else ones) or the Boots of Speed. Most likely it was boots of speed though.

Edit:
I double checked on my elven thief just to be certain. Wearing the robes of the chameleon, rings of silence/concealment, medallion of silence, for +8, blessing of Moordinal for +4, she has mastery.

With 11 in PE, and +4 from the helm her skill bar is almost full, but looks to be missing maybe 1-2 points.

If I take off the Helm of Yzar's Cost (+4 PE) I dropped down to the around the T in master. Same exact gear, only the helm taken off.

Wearing boots of speed or elven boots makes little or no difference really.

This is using the 1.0.7.4 and the UAP.

 

As far as I know clothing only has a noise penalty, no actual skill penalty. As for the missing skill points with varying stats: I encountered that as well. It turns out that even if you max a skill (for example: drink a potion of intelligence with your basic 8 int character and max the healing skill) you still need to have the respective attribute on a high level to gain all the benefits. So if you were to get your dex from 8 to 20 with Agility of Fire, max throwing and then ignore Agility of Fire your throwing skill would have only about 10/20 ranks at most, I guess. If you cast it once to reach 12 dex you would be fit for more than 12 points and thus arrive somewhere around 14/20. It appears as if the skill is always a little bit higher than what you could have via leveling it, depending on your attributes.

Read (I'm using heal again as an example and thus intelligence is the attribute in question):

8: ~6/20 ranks
9: ~10/20 ranks
12: 14/20 ranks
15: 18/20 ranks (usually enough for mastery)
18: 20/20 ranks (well, duh!)

So always about half a rank more than you should have.

 

I happen to know for a fact that gauntlets decrease the pickpocket skill. Not sure if there are any other examples.

 

Interesting, that does seem to be exactly what I was noticing with Prowl. Though Muro is correct about the gauntlets, they do lower pick pocket. Metal boots do add to noise, not sure about restricting skill. I always wear the boots of speed anyways.

Finally did get prowl mastery on my elf so I can see if it works ok or if I should just kick myself and use stun all day long. <.< >.> BACKSTAB!

Sadly Prowl is the only skill I cared about PE for. =/


Oh yeah, does anyone know what happens when you go over 20? For instance Backstab 5 character points, +8 from Moordinal's Blessing, +8 from that cursed dagger? Backstab for 180? :-o

 

I think that backstab is capped at 20 and that the same goes for all of the other skills, but don't take my word for it.

...what cursed dagger?

 

I suppose the proper term for this game is Hexed, but its the Shadow Hand Dagger from the Strange Ceromony Site.

+8/4 backstab, 1-6 damage, poisons 10, damage to wielder 10.

Never played with it, but it sounded interesting to toy with.

 

Ah, the Shadow Hand Dagger. Never tried it out, seeing how it deals damage and poison to the user with every hit, therefore I had no idea that the +backstab bonus is so massive.

Then again, the poison and damage isn't too high, so maybe - just maybe - it could be considered a decent weapon in some circumstances (poison immunity coming from 20 Constitution and a healer in the party, for example).

And, of course, it would be absolutely crushing if it would be possible to get over the 20 backstab cap with that weapon.

 

Power gamer sense... tingling.
You could abuse it in conjunction with Moorindal's blessing to reach mastery with just one invested character point. As far as I remember backstab mastery grants a higher chance for critical hits. More critical hits are good.

By the way, I tested around with blessings, more specifically the one Ter'el grants (+bow and all that). Well, it appears as if it didn't make a difference whether I had 20/20 in bow and got the blessing or not, at least towards the to hit % chances displayed when I took aim at a creature from the same spot. While this is only one skill I'm still inclined to say that skills do indeed have a maximum of 20/20 points. On the other hand bonuses are still useful, as you can apparently negate racial and/or background penalties. Might not be too bad though, just imagine the aforementioned backstab monster or a dodge master with Velorien's blessing.

 

So wait, a Dwarf with Makaal's blessing can get 20DX and the stat bonus of +5 speed?

I see a good possibility of utilizing that by not sacrificing to Kaitan/Velorien. Or going straight for Velorien, if you don't need any other bonuses.

 

I'm not sure about the dwarf. I know "backgrounds" don't actually change the cap, but I believe "race" does.

For instance, a halfling race has +2 DX, and has a cap of 22 instead of 20. Even if you take a background with -3 DX, you can still get to 22, it just requires more CP's, gear, or blessings to get there.

I don't know however, if the a dwarf's -1 DX makes it impossible or not. I suppose the blessings might ignore racial limits, but I haven't tested the stats, only the skills. Would be interesting to try out though.