Skill gains question

[Losian]

Hey folks, question about skill gains.. I'm having trouble figuring it out, or wondering if it's just depends on the schools/skills.

In this example I had a level 20 monk (10 armor use) and took Spirit Disciple, which is nine armor use. I leveled twice and, to my surprise, suddenly had 218 armor use. So it seems as if the spirit disciple's +9 AU stacked onto the monk's base 200, rather than having to surpass it, as I thought was normal.

I also thought most schools that started at 20 gained their skills up to that point, but for some reason as a spirit disciple I started with 0 spirit despite having 10 spirit per level. So I took some levels of Spiritist, expecting the two to add up like above, but in THIS case it seems the spiritist skill in spirit is totally overwriting what I have in spirit disciple, meaning it'll always be behind unless I level spiritist ahead of spirit disciple.

Just a bit confused on if one or the other is bugged, or if there's some differentiation I'm missing!

Thanks.

[hallucin8]

Let's see if I can clarify...

Skills and Stats are determined by the school which has the highest in that particular skill or stat.

Schools start gaining skills/stats after levelling up once, so any schools that start at lvl 10 or 20 do not get their accumulated skills/stats from lvl 1. If it helps, try not to think of Spirit Disciple of starting at lvl 20, but lvl 1... if that only confusing things, don't think of it that way

So, to elaborate on your example:

Monk at lvl 20:
200 Unarmed, evasion and AU
160 Magic evasion

Spirit Disciple lvl 20 takes on the base skills/stats for lvl 20 monk, since that is it's direct 'descendant' and since Monk doesn't get any Spirit, your Spirit skill is zero.

As you've likely worked out, or read on the wiki, Spirit Disciple gets the following per level:
9 Unarmed, Magic evasion and AU
10 Spirit and evasion

So at lvl 21 spirit disciple, you will have the skills from lvl 20 monk, then the skills from 1 level of spirit disciple, hence:
210 evasion,
209 unarmed and AU,
169 magic evasion, and
10 spirit

The thing to take away from this is, skills and stats never 'add-up', else a heavily multiclassed ped (aka uber-ped) would have an insane amount of stats and skills.

I hope that clarifies it a little bit at least. If not, feel free to keep asking until you get the answer that makes the most sense

Happy hunting, see yas in Istaria

[Losian]

So the reason for the discrepancy is that Spirit Disciple "inherits" some skills from monk, basically, but will always be lacking 200 spirit skill? Ouch.. That makes it kinda almost impractical to use, even with leveing spiritist a bit the spells miss most of the time, and I kinda wasn't planning on having to also level spiritist. Bleh.

That does make sense - I knew only the highest skill counted, but I was confused when I picked up 218 armor use at 22, rather than having to wait until 24 to wear the level 21 armor.

Thanks.