Originally Posted by ScrotieMcB
To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of skill books as a mechanic. However...
Originally Posted by Jabba
I would really prefer a system like Neverwinter nights or similar where when your character gains a level you can choose to pick from a number of new spells or abilities. So you have trade offs to make and choices that allow you to make a unique 'ish character...

So, thinking outloud, I am probably saying ditch the classless system, or make it some thing people can unlock naturally.
...if this is the alternative to skill books, then skill books are definitely the lesser of the two evils. Classlessness adds such a higher degree of customization than any form of class-based system ever could.

I honestly feel the best answer is for Larian to designate more guaranteed loot drops, such that at least one copy of every single spell is guaranteed. This doesn't necessarily need to be in the form of the skillbook directly; if clearing all the content guarantees blank skillbooks which can be Crafted with the appropriate scrolls, then that works too, assuming it's reasonable to assume the player has Crafting 5... so really, that would only apply to skills with a skill-level of at least 13. For everything higher than that, a guaranteed scroll hidden somewhere is fine; for everything lower than that, a guaranteed actual skillbook hidden somewhere is fine. It's okay to make some of these spots very obscure side areas, such as side quests. (If you need multiple copies of the skill because multiple characters in your party intend to use it, that would be on you.)


Books are not required for a classless system. Making the books drop more essentially re-asserts the pointlessness of the books. The MAIN complaint is the pointless running around required to find the and buy books. It's just an annoyance.

The second complaint is that it is illogical and detracts from the immersion. With classes or without classes, I want to be immersed in my character and his/her development through experience and to see what my choices to his/her attributes make in the following encounters. I want to be able to apply my choices when I gain experience - I DON'T want to have to stop what I am doing, go back to a town, run all over the place to find a vendor that has various scrolls I can pick from and then go back to what I was doing. Only to have another encounter and have another member ding and do it over and over and again.

Everything the current book system provides can be done without books -you just get rid of the books and give people choices in the character management to allocate points as they see fit.