There are plenty of luck boosting items throughout the game, so I would not say the skill was all that useful. Certainly not when you will gain so few skill points over the course of the game. Don't forget, some skill levels go up to 10 and you will have around 40 skill points per character by the end of the game. You are really ideally building a couple of highly specialised units.
Also, do NOT rely on having the Battlefields available. In some acts they are buggy, and impossible to leave if you enter at the wrong place - thus, unusable in those areas. For that reason Repair is a useful skill to have.
Extract is very useful, because it allows you to manufacture potions providing you have the right Alchemy Plants - and there are plenty of those in the game!
Combine is useful if you have a Mage character in the mix, useless if you have two fighters or any other combo where regenerating Mana & HP together is not required.
Anything that will help you make or find arrows is useless. You will find literally thousands of them throughout the game, probably tens of thousands.
As a Mage - pick one major spell, and then stick with it. You won't have the skill points available to deal enormous damage with several at once.
Never be afraid to trash a skill that proves useless and start over.
Lock Picking never works on anything you need it to, so is useless. Wisdom takes skill points for minimal benefits. Summoning Dolls skills are a complete waste of time.
If your Warrior has Sharpen, Death Blow, Improved Accuracy & Damage on his weapon of choice, he will kill nearly anything in a couple of hits. All are good skills to have.
Putting one point in the wizard healing spell for each character is a good idea. In the unlikely event you run low on potions, it will help conserve them.
Hope this helps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
