You could handle that by adjusting what type of skills you make available to the player with that first skill point.
E.g. by ruling out any too potent offensive spells in the
Mage path! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />
I have been thinking about it a while, and came to the conclusion:
"One small initial skill point shouldn´t hurt balancing too much."If you recall the
Warrior´s path for reference and which skills are at hand when starting, while bringing back the first level up of it you made in the demo and its effect.
It´s, i think, the
Repair skill for one, and besides that augmentation of the main weapon skills (
damage,
accuracy etc. increase).
The first investments in that area hardly gave me a significant edge over the opponents faced then! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
On the other hand the early need actually for some points in
Repair (first weapons easily wearing off!) or
Identification (potent weapons are rare in the beginning, some promising found there, need higher ID, however!) cleverly seem to avoid too early and powerful specialization in offensive capacity of the chars in that first stage. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
And even despite any hypothetical drain through the ritual, it seems illogic and far fetched that a character should have really no skill entry at all, at start. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />
Moreover it would set a first highlight on the skill system (You already would have an entry there the player could get a first rough idea of its mechanics with the help of it).
You only would like perhaps to avoid that for not confusing the beginner overtly, bringing too many of the features upon him right at the beginning... That could be a valid point against it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />
Ragon
P.S.: All in all i have my significant gripes with <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> - `specially the interface <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ouch.gif" alt="" /> - but balancing at least seems already quite advanced, at least as far as we could see for now. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
