Skills

Types

The type of a skill determines how it affects the party. There are three types of skills:

Party skill

A party skill grants an ability to the party as a whole. The level of a party skill is chosen from the party member who has the highest level in that skill, regardless whether it is the player or a companion. If the player has a party skill trained to level 2 or higher, a bonus will be awarded (see below).

Leader skill

Like a party skill, a leader skill grants an ability to a party. However, only the party-leader's level in the skill is used.

Personal skill

A personal skill grants an ability to an individual party-leader or companion. In general this ability only benefits the individual, trainer is an exception.

Party Skill Bonuses

If the player character has a sufficient level in a party skill, a bonus will be awarded. If the party's highest skill is not from the player character, the member who has the highest level in that skill will determine the party skill base value, while the player character's level will grant level bonuses according to the chart:

Player's Skill level	Bonus
0-1	(+0)
2-4	(+1)
5-7	(+2)
8-9	(+3)
10	(+4)

This means that party skills can obtain a maximum level of 14 when the player character is trained up to level 10.

List of Skills

Name	Type (required)	Attribute	Effect
Ironflesh	Personal	Strength	Increases maximum hit points by 2 per point.
Power Strike	Personal	Strength	Increases melee damage by 8% per point.
Power Throw	Personal	Strength	Increases throwing damage by 10% per point. Some thrown weapons require a few points in Power Throw to use.
Power Draw	Personal	Strength	Power Draw also adds 14% damage to each hit with the bow per point, until four levels beyond the bow’s minimum Power Draw requirement; for example, if the bow’s Power Draw requirement is 2, then a skill level of 2 will add 28%, while a skill level of 6 will add 84%, while any level beyond 6 will still add 84%. More powerful bows have a minimum Power Draw requirement to use. Max bonus damage is 140%. Formula: Bonus Added damage = 14% * minimum of (PD or PD_REQ + 4) Finally, higher Power Draw makes powerful bows easier to use by improving your accuracy and the time you can keep your aim steady while the bow is drawn, though this cannot overcome having a low proficiency with bows.
Weapon Master	Personal	Agility	Each skill level adds 40 points (starting from 60) to your weapon proficiency limits. Beyond this limit, you cannot increase weapon proficiencies by investing points into them. Weapon proficiencies can also be increased with practice, even beyond the limit set by Weapon Mastery, but the rate of increase will slow down as you get further from the limit.
Shield	Personal	Agility	Each point reduces the damage to your shield takes when blocking a hit by 8% per point. It also increases your shield’s effective size versus ranged attacks and improves how quickly you can recover to block again. Some shields require some points in this skill to use.
Athletics	Personal	Agility	Increases your base running speed, either making a lightly encumbered character run faster than normal, or letting a heavily encumbered character move at normal speed. This skill also improves your overland speed on the map if you are not mounted.
Riding	Personal	Agility	All horses (except the arena mount) have a minimum riding requirement; this skill also increases your speed and agility while sitting astride a steed, but only up to a certain point. Even at 10, this skill will not allow a Sumpter Horse to outrun a D'Shar Courser. This skill also improves your overland speed on the map if you are mounted on a horse. Couched lance damage is directly affected by this skill, provided the horse ridden is actually fast enough to allow for it. Acceleration and deceleration are also benefited by this skill.
Horse Archery	Personal	Agility	Reduces the accuracy penalty (20% per point) and damage penalty (20% at 0 HA, from which 2.5% per point is taken) for using a ranged weapon from a moving horse. Note that no penalties are applied if you are mounted but not moving. With high archery/crossbow/throwing proficiency (around 300 and over), leveling up this skill over 5 won't make any noticeable difference, as the accuracy penalty is already eliminated, and the damage penalty is at 7.5% with 5 Horse Archery, which is low enough (no damage penalty at 8 HA).
Looting	Party	Agility	Increases amount looted at villages and after battles by 10% and decreases the time needed to loot a village.
Trainer	Personal	Intelligence	At midnight of each day, a hero with the Trainer skill adds experience to every other party member of a lower level than himself. This includes the Player, companions and normal soldiers (as appropriate for their Character Sheet level, not tier). Higher ranks in Training add more experience to each eligible party member. If multiple party members have the skill and are higher level, the effects stack for each eligible party member.
Tracking and hunting	Party	Intelligence	A single point in Tracking and hunting allows you to see tracks left by other parties on the world map. Additional points let you spot tracks from a greater distance and make each track reveal more information as well as last longer before fading. Additionnally, each 3 point invested in the skill reduce food consumption by 15%.
Tactics	Party	Intelligence	Every two points on this skill increases your starting battle advantage by 1. Battle advantage determines how many soldiers you can have on the battlefield at the start of a battle and how large your reinforcements will be. This skill will also let you retreat from a battle with fewer casualties.
Path-finding	Party	Intelligence	Increases Party speed on the map by 3% per point.
Spotting	Party	Intelligence	Increases sight on the map by 10% per point.
Inventory Management	Leader	Intelligence	Increases Inventory capacity by 6 per point.
Wound Treatment	Party	Intelligence	Each point adds 20% to your party’s healing speed; it also allows lame horses to be healed automatically (there's a daily chance of this happening) if they are in your inventory.
Surgery	Party	Intelligence	Each point adds a 4% chance that a party member, when struck down, will be knocked unconscious instead of dying. This chance is added to a base chance of 25%, peaking at 81%. The chance applies only to regular troops, since companions can't be killed.
First Aid	Party	Intelligence	Each point will allow your hero characters to regain 5% of the health they’ve lost during a particular skirmish or battle. Note that this is added to a base rate of 10%, peaking at 80%. Specially useful for battles with several rounds.
Engineer	Party	Intelligence	This is used to determine how quickly you can build siege machinery.
Persuasion	Personal	Charisma	Increases the chance that other people will accept your point of view. This lowers the cost of the optional bribe required for successful persuasion, increases the chance of prisoners accepting to join your army by 4%, and increases the chance of routed enemies surrendering when offered the choice of capture or death.
Prisoner Management	Leader	Charisma	Increases maximum number of prisoners by 10. This skill also reduces the chance of prisoners escaping from your party once captured. An incredible profit can be turned out after every battle with the help of this skill.
Leadership	Leader	Charisma	Increases maximum number of troops by 10, decreases troop wages by 5%, increases party morale by 5% and decreases the chance that a recruited prisoner escapes by 5%. Note that the extra morale does not cover group size you incur while being at the cap.
Trade	Party	Charisma	Decreases trade penalty by 5% (meaning both selling and buying are more profitable). When using assess local prices, it also informs of one more possible profit opportunity by skill level and shortens the time it takes.

More info

Some skills are required to unlock and build some Fief Improvements.

If the player's or a companion's name is shown in red on the party screen, then he/she is too wounded to participate in battles or to contribute with party skills until getting healed back to above the given thresholds: ≥5 hp for the player, ≥15 hp for companions.

Considering the 3 battle-related party skills - Surgery, First Aid and Tactics -, the player's ability to participate in battle is crucial, because without you, it will automatically become an autocalc-battle in which these skill effects are bypassed. Apart from that, companions contribute to the entirety of each battle round that started while they were conscious, regardless if they actually participate or if they get knocked out in the meantime. As long as they can regenerate enough hitpoints before the next round via First Aid, their aforementioned party skill bonuses will continue to apply. In the beginning, it may be suggested to order your companions to stay out of battle (talk to them to see the option) to ensure that your party gets the bonuses they provide all along. But eventually, with a high First Aid skill, that will no longer be a problem.

The Looting skill works a little differently as it does not get bypassed by autocalc battles. Which means that the loot from the dead enemy units gets processed at the end of the battle (for more info, read Leonion's posts here: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,348755.msg8353561.html#msg8353561). As such, in order to get more loot, the skill contributor needs to have enough hp left after the battle (First Aid helps when knocked out) to not count as a wounded unit.

The remaining party skills - Wound Treatment, Engineer, Trade, Spotting, Tracking and hunting, Path-finding - apply continously on the world map or inside scenes as long as you or the given skill contributor is not too wounded.

Skill Changes

Compared to native and other mods, heroes in Pendor have added benefits to leveling up certain skills:

Looting

Putting points into this skill increases the amount and improves the quality of loot you receive after a battle. Especially useful when fighting Noldor troops, as you can get Reinforced versions of Noldor armor this way. It also increases the chance of rarer drops such as Demon Chargers. Note that presence of companions in your party as well as a total number of troops in your party affects the amount of loot you get at the post-victory screen.

• Each companion "takes" 3 shares of loot.
• Each non-hero soldier "takes" 1 share of loot.

For best results, use as few companions and as few soldiers overall as possible, quality > quantity.

After the total value loot deserved is calculated, random items from the troops that have been defeated will be looted, until their total value reaches the deserved total. The quality of the item and the modifier it has (if any) will affect each item's value towards reaching the total.

Prisoner Management

Each point in this skill has been increased by 5 -- to a total of 10 prisoners per level.

Since 3.9.0, it also helps you from retaining lords whilst they are captured and in your party as prisoners (before it was a flat chance). Chances were changed for all, party, garrisoned and garrisoned in a fief with prison tower (chances for them escaping are rolled every 2 days):

Where is the lord?	3.8.4 value (fixed)	3.9 base value	Decrease per PM point	3.9 with 10 PM
Party	5%	40%	2%	20%
In walled Fief	2%	20%	1%	10%
In Prison Tower	0.5%	10%	0.5%	5%

.9 values will only affect you and your kingdom (if you're monarch), the other kingdoms and minor factions will still use the (more advantageous but non-scaling with Prisoner Management) value.

Note that to be asked for a rescue, every day there's a 5% chance the kingdom offers a more generous sum for the freedom of the vassal/monarch. Still due the new high escape chances, until a high Prisoner Management skill is reached, it is suggested to talk to the vassal and give them freedom for whatever they offer.

However, the biggest buff to the skill is the improved chances of capturing enemy lords and unique spawns by 5%, from 40% at 0, up to a max of 90% capture chance at lvl10. Extremely useful, it is generally regarded as the one of the highest priority skills mid-game.

Note: unique spawn's can't escape once captured like it may happen with kingdom's vassals.

Engineering

Has turned out to be nerfed, as now the town/castles/villages upgrades rely on the skills of the steward/village elder, not on yours. The skill is still useful to reduce siege time. With 14 engineering, a ladder takes less than an hour to settle, a siege tower takes only 6 hours.

All cities are ladder sieges, except for Rane and Avendor, for castles, siege-tower sieges prevail.

Trainer

Also increases the chances that when you send a companion to train your CKO. According to the formulas:

Attribute probability (this goes for each attribute) = 3%+Training/3+(Attr Difference-5)/5 (2% instead of 3% for sergeants, and they max at companion attribute - 1)

Skill probability (this goes for each skill) = 3%+Training/3+(Skill Difference-3)/2 (2% instead of 3% for sergeants, and they max at companion skill)

WP probability (this goes for each proficiency) = 3%+Training/3+((Weapon Prof Difference/20)-5)/2 (2% instead of 3% for sergeants, and they max at companion WP - 30)

Training is a decisive factor on the speed at which your KO troops are improved, always having in mind that they can't go over the trainer's stats.

Training also speeds up the Village Elder quest to train the villagers.

Persuasion

Persuasion slightly reduces the relationship that a player monarch needs with a prisoner to get them to defect. The formula for the required relationship is:

• 15 base
• Campaign AI setting: +0 on Poor, +5 on Average, +10 on Good
• +1 for each castle or village owned by lord's faction, +2 for each city
• -1 for each castle or village owned by player's faction, -2 for each city
• -1 for each point in Persuasion skill