My second run of TOEE, trying to beat a time, and selfimposed rules.

If the Heal check is successful. This is the key phrase. If the heal check is not successful you do not heal at twice the rate. How high is your skill in heal? If the character giving the long-term care does not meet the heal check, the healing is normal. Also the healing must be active the character is actively applying the heal.

 

Cha-ching! My thoughts exactly! My First Aid is normally a spontaneous Cure Minor Wounds since it doesn't have any chance to fail. I still keep the skill maxed out on my cleric just for RP purposes, but I wish I could see some tangible reward for the investment.

 

I find it usefull at low levels if your cleric gets taken out.
Likewise it's handy when you play without a healer.

 

I can only assume that Troika meant to have the Heal skill work as first aid on the battlefield to help stabilize the wounded character. I do not believe they intend to apply all the facets of the heal skill as per RAW or if they did found it to be a daunting task.

Also, it makes no sense if the character using the heal skill also receives all their spells. Since that character is not memorizing or praying to their god they should not receive the spells.

If a fighter type or rogue is giving the healing they could not recover any hp because they are not resting.

A lot of work for very little gain

 

The Heal skill is not broken as it is in TOEE. It may not be fully implemented per RAW for a variety of reasons. The skill works on the battlefield to stabilize the characters as first aid. This result is what the skill is suppose to achieve.

As far as intimidate being useless quite possible, but I have used it to good effect (especially against good ole Mickey). I also have my fighter focus on survival and tumble.

The rogue is just easier to upgrade given the number of skill points (10 per level up!). A halfling rogue is especially useful. The paladin makes for a good diplomatic type and eventually a backup healer.

 

I'll have to say that I've never used most skills in the game, unless they are passive, such as spot, sense motive, diplomacy and intimidation. I guess I just feel they are unneeded. I usually have some kind of healing spell or one of the hundred thousand healing potions the game gives you on hand at all times. Almost every bugbear carries one, and the temple is basically a bugbear hive.

 

Storm of Zehir had this, and it was quite nice. I think you could even get NPC cohorts to contribute their talents to dialogue, which is noticeably lacking in some other games ("I need to make a dialogue-based open lock check, but I can't ask the rogue NPC standing next to me with 15 points in it to try instead").

 

Actually, you can. I did just exactly that yesterday when I rescued Wicked from the 2nd level of the temple, along with Sir Juffer and Princess Telahi(sp?). If you pick one of your main characters, bring up the radial menu and choose talk, you can then pick one of your NPC's in the party, and in this case, Wicked is a rogue. It gave me a few options like telling him to get lost, pick this lock and 2 other options I cannot recall right now.

 

That isn't really what I meant, but I wasn't referring to ToEE in my parenthetical statement.

The most recent example I can come up with is in the NWN2 module Mysteries of Westgate. There was a quest in that where I had to get something in a person's wall safe. The two ways I found were picking the lock, and killing the owner to get a key. However, there was no direct way to pick the lock, because doing so was dialogue-based. You clicked on a painting that the safe was behind, and it gave you dialogue options to look behind the painting, and then pick the lock. But the main character is the only person who can engage in dialogue (since the module wasn't using the Storm of Zehir system), so I was screwed out of that option, despite my rogue companion having the necessary skills. To top it off, the rogue complained at my unnecessarily killing the safe's owner instead of being sneaky. ToEE doesn't have dialogue checks like that except for bluff/diplomacy/etc.

Using the SoZ system, I'd be able to start the dialogue with the main character, but when it came time to pick the lock, I could switch to the rogue from within the dialogue interface and use her skills. The same is true for the usual dialogue skills; if someone other than who's currently talking has something special they can do, it'll be indicated, and they can chime in. It's an improvement over most previous NWN games, since they frequently give you companions with points in skills that are impossible for them to actually use, barring the module designer specifically scripting the possibility in.

And of course, it's an improvement over ToEE, too, where if you have dialogue skills spread over several characters, you might have to run through conversations multiple times to find the right character to use, and if you have to use multiple skills that aren't on the same person, you're out of luck.

 

In the '70's, we called it Bind Wounds. All it did was prevent bleeding to death.

 

Off topic I suppose, but you couldn't pick pocket the key from the owner without killing him?