by slinkster » Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:51 pm
This is just my personal opinion, based on years of LARPing. Your mileage may vary, and our lovely staff may have different thoughts on the subject.
Aside from the mandatory, zero point racial skills, any skill should be considered optional. Do you actually need a research skill to play the game? No. Would it be helpful if you wished to directly poke at and to a certain extent drive plot? Yes.
Whether or not you should invest CP in a research pool really all depends on how you plan/tend to interact with the game world. Some players have a knack for finding all the plot they crave (and then some) just by talking to every NPC ever and being in the right place at the right time. They probably don't need such a skill, although it certainly wouldn't hurt them to have one since, lets be honest, info skills can come in handy. Other players, for whatever reason, don't have that particular knack and would likely derive a ton of benefit from one because it allows them to get hooked into plots they might not otherwise find on their own by providing them with information they can act on or share with other players who are hooked into the same plots.
If you are the kind of player who is good at social networking/engineering and are having trouble deciding how to spend your all-too-quickly-spent initial CP, you might benefit from holding off on a pool. Otherwise, you may wish to reconsider that extra point(s) of marksmanship/willpower/Earth/Air/Fire/Water/Void in lieu of a point or two of research.
Not nearly as sassy as Treska.
