Skills – Pillars of Eternity

This page tells players about the skills in Pillars of Eternity, and what each point in the skill provides.

Athletics

Adventuring is tiring work. Traveling, fighting, and scrambling up fallen statues can take its toll. The Athletics skill counters the effects of accrued Fatigue, allowing characters to go farther and fight longer before they suffer penalties. In conversations and scripted interactions, Athletics is used for physical feats like climbing, swimming, and jumping.

Each polint of Athletics adds:

• +10% Max Fatigue
• -40% Combat Fatigue Gain (capped at -90% total)

New in version 3.0, a character with at least one point in Athletics gains the Second Wind ability, which can be used once per encounter to restore some Endurance.


Lore

Lore reresents a character’s accumuplated 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.

Each polint of Lore adds:

• +1 to the level of scrolls a character can use

Mechanics

Traps and locks can be a problem for even the toughest adventurers, draining their resources and maiming or killing those who are unfortunate enough to trigger an unseen floor plate. The Mechanics skill makes it easier to open locks and find and disable traps. Additionally, any character can use the Mechanics skill to place traps of their own. The higher the Mechanics skill, the more accurate the trap. In conversations and scripted interactions, Mechanics can be used to activate or disable a variety of machines.

Each point of Mechanics adds:

• +1 to the difficulty of traps a character can disarm
• +1 to the difficulty of locks a character can pick
• +3 Trap Accuracy

Stealth

Stealth allows characters of any class to attempt to avoid being seen or heard. It is used automatically whenever a character is in Scouting mode. The higher the character’s skill, the closer they can get to enemies before being detected.


Survival

Survival allows characters to make better use of the food and potion items they find. The higher the character’s Survival skill, the longer the duration of such items. Survival can also be used in conversations and scripted interactions that involve wilderness challenges or specialization information.

Each point of Survival adds:

• +10% Consumable Duration

New in version 3.0, a character with at least one point in Survival can pick a bonus when camping (but not when resting at an inn). This bonus will affect damage reduction, healing received, movement speed, accuracy versus one of five creature types (beast, primordial, spirit, vessel, or wilder), consumbale duration, or damage versus flanked enemies.