

The game does group similar skills together. You need both to be efficient in any battle situation. I prefer being on foot, but getting a 60 riding is easy and pretty useful as well. Still, 'athletics only' makes it hard to get those last few routing troops, and it's harder to position and maneuver troops on foot. Originally posted by Trip:Athletics is an extremely useful and powerful skill, that gets almost overpowered at high levels. But my default is all horse, crippled legs. I have a "Combat Monster" playthrough for when I feel like doing tournaments, and that dude has some athletics. I just don't care to mess with the athletics I guess is what it boils down to.

My character, in armor, basically crawls when I am off the horse. If I do it is USUALLY because it is close to the end of the battle anyhow and I am (as you phrased it) collecting skulls at that point just for the xp. I very, very rarely die in the open field. In all cases the ability to actively command helps a LOT, and survivability on a horse in many cases means me not being the daredevil. And for that, you may need a high athletics skill in case you can't use a horse and need to flee from an overwhelming enemy.

In a siege, in a clash of armies? You're just one of many and staying alive is more important than the skulls you collect. I just say you also need to put some points into athletics, since that's your auxillary skill saving your sorry hide. When leading a 100 men party, you still may make a difference. When fighting looters it's usually just you and maybe a handful of recruits. And then there's the duels in arenas or hideouts, where you also don't always have a horse (depending on culture).Īnd the bigger an army is, the less impact your character has personally when fighting. You really don't want to rely on riding skills in sieges or while attacking a hideout or right atfer your horse died and you're in the middle of some enemy formation.

Athletics doesn't seem like a great skill at first until you realize that it's a life saver once you're without a horse. As I said before, riding is good, but you don't need to push it too high. And it seems i just keep rolling like that. Early game (Of course no Aserai at that point) I get the fastest horse I can and a bow and two bags of arrows. Well I know why in the beginning is a bow and two bags of arrows will get you through a good number of looters solo, so. Originally posted by Rig Nan Roach:Horse, Asera, best armor I can find, bow, two sets of arrows, two handed sword.
