Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire skills

Skills allow your character to perform specialized actions like stealth, detecting traps, picking locks, or reading scrolls. They can also be used to overcome obstacles in conversations and scripted interactions. Skills will advance as your characters gain level, but items and other bonuses can also increase skills.

The skill system in is an extension to the same system in. It adds many more skills, which are now split into "Active" and "Passive" groups. The introduction of a party-assisted skill check mechanic increases the usefulness of your party members' skills during dialogue and scripted interactions, where previously these checks were made by the Watcher exclusively. Additionally, Lore has been broken up and divided between History, Religion, Metaphysics, and Arcana (the latter defining the level of scrolls a character can use).

Skill distribution
Upon leveling up, the player will receive 2 skill points - one for each group. The player must place one point into an active skill, and one into a passive skill. Skill points cannot be "saved", and must be spent as part of leveling up. As with the first game, a character's class and background provide an initial bonus to skills. A character does not get any assignable skill points at level 1, with the only points being from these bonuses.

Accumulated, a character will receive 38 skill points from 19 level-ups, with the additional 10 bonus points from their class, and 3 bonus points from their background, bringing it to a total of 51 points (or 50, should they pick a background that only gives them 2 points).

Class
Picking any class gives a +2 bonus to 5 different skills. A multiclass character limits this to +1, with overlapping bonuses being added together (the note in the character creator regarding "averaging" skill bonuses is misleading).

Background
A character's background provides a second set of skill point bonuses. Depending on the background, the point arrangement can be one of:
 * +1 for three different skills
 * +2 to one skill
 * +1 to two skills, +2 to one skill. Marksman only.


 * Legend: Yes = 1 rank, YesYes = 2 ranks, * = NPC-only background

Party-assist bonus
The party-assist mechanic effectively combines the skills of other party members with yours, allowing their knowledge of skills to influence checks made during dialogue and scripted interactions. This was introduced to rectify a problem of verisimilitude many players had with the previous game, where companion skill levels were completely ignored for speech checks - even in situations where the Watcher could simply ask for assistance.

A party-assist bonus is applied to most skill checks in the game, however (depending on the context) some skill checks are limited only to the player character. These are clearly marked as "Watcher Only".

Party-assist is accomplished by adding a bonus to the checked character's skill. The summed skill of all other party members (not including the target of the check) is checked against the following thresholds to determine the bonus "assist value" applied. Note that these thresholds are lower limit inclusive, and upper limit exclusive.

''For example : The Watcher performs a history action that allows a party assist. The Watcher has a history skill of 3, and their party members, Aloth, Xoti, and Eder, have history skills of 3, 4 and 0. The other party members have a combined skill of 7 (3+4+0) and give the watcher a bonus of +4, giving The Watcher a total skill of 7.''

In practice, this means that specialising party members (i.e. dumping points into a skill on a character) is not necessary for a supporting bonus. Three supporting party members with 2 skill each provide the same bonus as a party member with 6 skill.

Active
All active skills have some sort of impact on game mechanics (other than skill checks in conversations and scripted interactions). With Alchemy, Arcana and Explosives this means means increased potency for items associated with the skill. With other skills like Mechanics, Slight of Hand and Stealth, this means being able to make use of the lockpicking + trap disarming, pickpocketing and stealth mechanics respectively, with higher levels allowing you to pick more difficult locks, disarm more difficult traps, pickpocket without being noticed, and avoid detection in stealth.

Passive
Passive skills generally don't have an impact on game mechanics and combat. They are only used in conversations and scripted interactions as skill checks, and otherwise do not provide bonuses.

Unused skills
The following skills have a description or image, but are not used in the game.


 * Acrobatics: Acrobatics is relied on whenever a character's grace and poise are put to the test, e.g. balancing on a beam or tumbling out of the way of a rolling boulder.
 * Lore: Lore represents a character's accumulated miscellaneous knowledge and trivia, often of occult or esoteric topics. Outside of conversations and scripted interactions, Lore is used to activate scrolls. Higher Lore values allow the character to use higher level scrolls.
 * Jumping
 * Climbing
 * Hunting