Make synergies stack with ability scores.

[hilf]

What do synergies give us?
Can they boost our skills above limit? No, they can't.
They allow us to put less skill points in skills and still have them at current skill limit.

With 4 in Will we can put 13 in all PSI schools and have this:

Thought Control 13 (15)
Psychokinesis 13 (15)
Metathermics 13 (15)

Putting more SPs would not give us anything.
Now, if we increase Will to 9 we will have this:

Thought Control 13 (18)
Psychokinesis 13 (18)
Metathermics 13 (18)

So far so good. But try putting more SPs in our skills. We will have this:

Thought Control 15 (21)
Psychokinesis 15 (21)
Metathermics 15 (21)

Previously we couldn't raise effective skill level by putting more than 13 points in any of three PSI skills. But now we can. Looks like bonus from synergies were overridden by high ability score bonus. Let's do one more test and remove points from 2 of our PSI schools:

Thought Control 0 (1)
Psychokinesis 15 (21)
Metathermics 0 (1)

Indeed, synergies have no effect if bonus from ability score is higher than their bonus. And this defeats their purpose.

I'd also like to notice that "typical" (for some definitions of typical) character build will put most of his skill points in skills that benefit from those ability scores that have high values.

What i would like to see is synergy bonus stacking with ability score bonus. Synergy bonus would be applied first, increasing skill level not higher than current limit, then ability bonus would kick in, possibly increasing it above limit.
In my example it would give us:

Thought Control 13 (21) ( 15 with synergy bonus only )
Psychokinesis 13 (21) ( 15 with synergy bonus only )
Metathermics 13 (21) ( 15 with synergy bonus only )

Investing more SPs would not increase effective skill level.

There are two thing to notice here:
Maximum effective skill level will remain the same.
The rule "synergies cannot boost skills beyond their maximum for your current level" will not be broken.


I wasn't sure if it's a bug or not so i'm putting it in Suggestions forum, just to be on safe side (:

[Styg]

Sorry but no. The exact reason why synergies work the way they do is to prevent people from investing in side skills in order to boost the main skill.

Quite the other way around - the purpose of synergies is to provide you with small bonuses to side skills (the ones you don't invest in or max out) based on a strong related skill.

[hilf]

It's also explained in the wiki and it makes sense once you know the reasoning, but it's not something any player could intuitively know.
So IMO this little bit of info should be explained in-game - one small sentence in the skills menu would do it.

And, perhaps, also add information that bonus from synergy does not stack with bonus from ability score? This is something that surprised me a little.
This knowledge can influence character creation, and we know well how important this process is (:

[bushwhacker2k]

It's also explained in the wiki and it makes sense once you know the reasoning, but it's not something any player could intuitively know.
So IMO this little bit of info should be explained in-game - one small sentence in the skills menu would do it.

And, perhaps, also add information that bonus from synergy does not stack with bonus from ability score? This is something that surprised me a little.
This knowledge can influence character creation, and we know well how important this process is (:

Yeah, it seems like there's a nice chunk of knowledge you can only pick up post-character creation that specifically influences decisions made during character creation.

[hilf]

Well, i was wrong after all. I just picked example that could not show this.

Synergies do stack with ability scores. They are applied after ability score bonus is applied.