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Remove Thick Skin

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 1:52 am
by Aquillion
Thick Skin adds nothing to the game. It's often a no-brainer talent (just about everyone wants to take less damage), it's boring, and it generally just doesn't serve any purpose. It was changed to its current version because the old HP-adding version was practically mandatory for everyone, yet the current version is hardly any better.

Obviously some things might need to be rebalanced without it. I don't pretend to be a balance expert, so someone else would need to figure out the numbers. But I think that that would be doable enough. One option would simply be to fold the Resist All bonus for Thick Skin directly into Constitution (with the values tweaked for balance as necessary.)

The point is, though - talent points are meant to be used to customize your character. There are some other "just better" talents in that tree, obviously, but Thick Skin is by far the worst - it doesn't reflect any sort of choice or specialization, since everyone, without exception, benefits from taking less damage.

Possibly something else could replace it if people want a toughness-themed generic talent (or a generic-point sink for classes that have few places to spend them), but whatever replaces it ought to involve some kind of trade-off, in the way that eg. the light / heavy high armor talents aren't useful if you're not wearing heavy armor - granted that for many classes it's a no-brainer, but it's still a choice occasionally.

Re: Remove Thick Skin

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 8:46 pm
by bpat
It's not required for everyone though. I usually leave it around 2/5 or so unless I have a lot of spare points. One of my more recent winners had 0/5 because there were better options available. Thick Skin has a fair opportunity cost. Resist all seems to stack diminishingly with specific damage resistance so it's not quite as good as it looks. Overall, 5 talent points for 15% less damage taken (except against Orcs and anyone else with respen) is reasonable since those are points not going to Device Mastery, Armour Training, etc.