Hi, I'm new to the thread although I have lurked for a while I'm just wondering, does the initial starting bonuses granted from race and background add to your skill rank after the bar becomes full? Example: You get +3 rank to your dodge skill. You already invested enough cps and have raised it by 16 and now have a total of 19 ranks to your dodge skill. Does raising the rank one more time to the max give you the bonus equivlent of 20 ranks or 23? Since initial penalties applies (negative ranks) I thought that the same could be true for initial bonuses although that may not be the way it work.
No, the caps stay the same. However, you can negate your racial penalties with a background, e.g. reach IN20 as a half-ogre.
:-? I'm talking about rank skills not attributes. Or did you get that part and just decided to add another point?
Irrelevant. All attributes and skills have caps, which are hard-coded, and don't dynamically change according to your background. Is that much clear? Any attribute/skill caps at 20. Some races have increased caps for some attributes, but this is also hard-coded in each specific case.
yep thanks. I already knew about the attribute part but wasn't so sure about the skills. Since you can technically have a lower cap on skills for some races and backgrounds I thought the reverse might be true - at least from race bonuses. Guess not.
Internally your attributes/skills always cap at 20. Think of races/backgrounds as buffs/debuffs. No matter what race/background combo you choose, you'll still find out that you have 8 for each attribute and 0 for each skill at the start of the game if you open your save with a hex editor. The only exceptions are the attributes with racial bonuses, they can go over 20 on the character screen, but still you can't put more than 12 points into them (8+12=20), so if you play a half-ogre with a background that sets his strength back to 8, he won't be able to reach his racial cap. The same thing with skills, except each CP adds 4 ranks to a skill at once. You can't put more than 5 CPs into a skill (4x5=20).
okay then but what I meant to ask is if you can get over 20 points in skill ranking. If ranking works the same way as what I think you meant then it should be possible to get a skill to bypass the 20 mark. In other words can a half orc get a total of 22 melee and dodge skill and can a dwarf get a total of 22 points in firearm/disarm skills? Thanks for answering by the way EDIT: By skill i meant ranks.
Oh, shit, this is too confusing to explain. You can't go over the cap of 20 for any attribute/skill, except for the attributes which have racial bonuses, but even then you can't put more than 12 points into it. So, no, even if you already have 19 ranks in a skill, adding one more CP will only give you one rank (i.e. you'll have 20 ranks total). On a side note, it's not really important to get all 20 ranks, e.g. dwarves get +2 ranks to all technological skills, so they can master them with only 4 CPs (mastery requires 18 ranks, the only exception is Persuasion, IIRC).
20 is the max you can get in any skill. +2 racial bonus to firearms gives you a 2/20. Adding 4 CPs gives you 18/20. Adding a 5th CP gives you 20/20. In other words the extra 2 points you get from the CP are 'lost' since you can never raise a skill above 20. 18/20 is the minimum needed for mastery so in the example only 4 CPs are needed for mastery instead of 5.
I think some skill bonuses does take into account the points above 20 as well, can't remember where did I saw that though. Melee or Firearms to-hit ratio perhaps? Edit: Might have been the effect of equipment modifiers on said skill, not CPs.
Almost surely not melee as I remember my beat with an ugly stick half-orc getting only 5% more for last cp I put in.
