Invest in Presence if you're working this school of combat. The majority of skills demands it!
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Invest in Presence if you're working this school of combat. The majority of skills demands it!
Considering that most of the Theatrics weapons are terribly under-powered, I'd suggest that Stamina, Agility or Strength would be a better use for those skill points. You're going to need to hit your opponent much more often in order to do any real damage to him, and that requires Agility and Stamina. And, to compensate for the low damage power of the weapons, you'll need a high Strength.
Gratuitous Violence is, by far, the best skill in this style, in my opinion. Consider: a GV of 3 or more will allow your fighter to cause some pretty serious bleeding damage...+5 to +15 or more per round. That's the equivvelant (sp?) of a free Fist or Trident shot every round, with no chance of being blocked or parried.
The Knuckle Duster is a great weapon for the starting Theatrics glad, because of it's fast attack speed.....more shots per round. But, again, more shots means more loss of Stamina. After you start encountering opponents of higher levels, with higher defense or better armor (or that first level dude decked out entirely in purple thanks to his Mom's credit card), you can throw that Knuckle Duster in the Dumpster.
Presence will help you to learn the higher-end skills, and prevent your glad from being killed as often, but if you can't win the duels early on because you don't have the gas, strength, or agility, you'll be hard pressed to reach those skills, anyway.
In the Beta, Presence was just about in all the high end skills, coupled with Strength and Chi I believe. It has been a while, though. I'm sure there's been some changes. You're right about concentrating in those other stat areas, early in the fighter's career.
I would like to point out that in the Beta test, most of us invested in weapons / armor for bonus stats, rather than taking the time and training up the stat ranks individually.