Scholarship vs Charisma

[hala]

Well both of them give you a bonus to Persuasion, yet scholarship gives you a bonus to resarch aswell.
So why should anyone put points into Charisma?

[Numinor]

Because charisma costs considerably less Exp to raise it, especially on higher levels.

[Head-e-ter]

not at all, its the other way around
scholarship is 3-3-6-9-12
charisma is 0-4-8-12-16

if you upgrade charisma it should only be after
you get a high scholarship, cause some options
in the game require a persuasion up to 9 (johansen, giovanni)

[Komissar Charon]

The main reason is that 6 persuasion still won't get you very far towards the end of the game. Plus, with the XP costs that Head-e-ter provided, you can see that 2 Charisma, for example, still costs less than 3 Scholarship. It's wise to level up both of them, with Scholarship as your first priority.

[gashlycrumb]

I guess the logic of leveling up both Scholarship & Charisma would also apply to Subterfuge & Appearance? They both only change one's level of Seduction.

At what point is leveling up a skill overkill? I see myself definitely becoming a jack of all trades and master of none!

[Ghostmaker]

It seemed to me that the social feats were set at 2 + (area*2) being able to accomplish everything possible for that social feat in that area. Which is to say, in SM a 4 in any given feat will open all options, whereas there are some conversations very near the end where 9-10 would be needed to open every possible dialogue available to the given social feat.
This is based on what I encountered, not any look at the code.

[Komissar Charon]

[QUOTE=gashlycrumb]At what point is leveling up a skill overkill? I see myself definitely becoming a jack of all trades and master of none![/QUOTE]

You have to draw a line somewhere, but it's really up to you where that line is. My advice, however, is to have at least one combat stat at 10, and a Discipline at 5 (The best choice is either a strong buff like Celerity, or an active Discipline). Having a high social skill is great as well, and I reccomend putting 8-9 in at least one of your choice. Stealth never really needs to be raised above 5-6 (and even that high is only an option, which I usually take for convinience and the few extra XP it gives) unless you're planning to do some later missions without being noticed at all. At this point, everything else is pretty much up to you, but putting a few points to some defensive feats is recommended for a melee-heavy character. To put this more concisely, here's my reccomendation for priorities:

1) High Combat feat(s is possible, but not reccomended too much).
2) Medium Social feat(s).
3) High Discipline(s)
4) High Social feat(s).
5) Medium Stealth/Lockpicking.
6) Medium/High Defensive feat(s).
7) Pure choice if you have anything left.