Shattered Kingdoms

I haven't played a bard since I gm'd one as soon as they came out. If Int affects their ability to land a persuade, then I am all for it. If not, then there is no reason to get it really.

Int affects whether or not you can sing a song and about a half-a-dozen skills that are very bardy. No, it does not affect Persuade, that is cha. That is also why I placed it first.

One more addition, scout need int. It affects whether they find an herb or not.

I don't agree much with Algon. +40 HPs won't save a sorc from a voodoo or a backstab, so he might as well spare the trains and give them to art or attribute points(not mana though). Warlocks fall in the same category, shamans and priests should not bother with HP trains. Only necros need to train HP for buffed animates. After all don't forget, each item that mods your attributes just takes away a slot from a phat lewt scripted item or an uberly enchanted one.

As a general advice, any warrior should have max STR/DEX/CON/HP naturally(if this can't be done like in barbarians, have a little less CON, STR/DEX should be naturally maxed so you can mod CON to max).

Only classes that should give mana are shamans and priests if they want a big pool for endless healing.

Bards need a lot of INT as well, more than they need CON or STR.

Hellions/paladins that practically need all stats high should distribute them carefully while they consider how easily they can mod each stat to max.

Last, I'd suggest max CHA naturally for any class that relies on order(warlocks, sorcs, necros, scouts etc). Sure there is a ton of +great CHA mods in SK, but there are for almost any other attribute as well. And max natural CHA speeds up levelling, which generally is a good thing.

Animates and controls only work for evil sorcs or greys who play with evil, which I don't. As for pets/charms, I do fine with what I have and I keep a few + greater cha mods for when I work with that, but not to keep up all the time. Those are situational things and there is much more to SK than PK where other stats are useful.

What?

Nice that you leave yourself open to necromancers.

I might be mistaken but I am pretty sure int affects Herbalism, it might be wis though.

That is no reason to train it though, you can just fly through 3-4 more rooms and find the same. There is no reason to waste stats on that.

I wouldn't do hp on priests/shamans/warlocks/sorcs except if they were spare points (read: After int, wis, con and art)

Except for that (and bards, which you got all wrong) I completely agree with you Gilgon.

I take the same approach to character building as Algon. Always max con no matter what class, and I would add cha and int to bards, but I certainly wouldn't take anything from them that he suggested. Personally, I like adding the hp to casters. Every little bit helps there. I would probably have a few pieces of equipment to boost my hp further, and I would make sure I had lots of MP and spells like shield up all the time. It's already hard enough for a non magical resistant race to survive voodoo. Everything else seems pretty basic.