Same, at least if there's a limit in total character development. Ignore the skill and focus on putting those points/experience in other skills of direct use.

What if there *isn't* a limit in total character development, but only a limit on how far a given skill can be developed?

Keep in mind, even in what I would call a troll game there are still some guidelines that should be followed, like not forcing the player to repeat large portions of the game. Syobon Action, for example, never forces you back further than the last checkpoint you hit. (Mario Maker troll levels do this, but that's fallen out of favor to the point where, on videos (as I don't have access to the game or its sequel), you're more likely to see a fake CP1 (as that troll is called) than a real one.)

(CP1 = In a level with two check points, this is when, after hitting the second check point, the level forces you to hit the first one again, causing you to spawn there instead of at the second one.)

Reminds me of the Rainbow Pudding in Final Fantasy 4 DS. While it isn't permanently missable, it's a rare drop (in a remake of a game notorious for its rare drops) that is required in order to continue the sidequest that was added to this version.

Well, I didn`t notice any need to pay money to develope my character in Morrowind. I guess you did mistake it with Gothic?
If so, I think, that the character system in Gothic and its successors is the worst ever made. There`s no fun to level up, just to recognize that you have to find a trainer -who is often on the other side of the gameworld- to train your skills. And if that wasn`t enuff, those trainers want a good heap of money for their services. Yeah, I know: "realism". But I`m playing a game and want to have fun, I don`t want to bother with so called "realistic" game mechanics.

Reminds me of the Ultima series, which, in many cases, chose to favor realism over playability. For example: Food. I liked how Ultima 6 made food less important by making it only need to rest, but then Ultima 7 reversed course and not only is food needed without rest, but you have to *manually* feed your characters, which forces you to interact with the terrible inventory system. There's also, ever since Ultima 4, the need for reagents to cast even the most basic of spells, and you have to buy them (they don't drop as loot), so casting spells means extra work for the player, which leads to players not bothering with attack spells, making combat boring (since all that's left are movement (which is not favored by the game) and physical attacks..

(Incidentally, Ultima 4 did a couple interesting things economy wise: First, you can choose how much to pay for reagents, but paying less than their value costs you virtue (which you need to beat the game). Second, once you become the Avatar, you can get mystic equipment, sell it, and then get more where you first found it, making money irrelevant. (Note that selling all of that mystic gear gives you way more money than you can carry.) Note that the NES arrangement got rid of the ability to sell mystic gear, but you can still cheat the reagent seller.)

(Ultima 6 also did something interesting; there's an event that gives you all the gold you can carry. Ultima 7 has a situation in which you can gamble and earn more money on average than you use, which sort of reminds me of Dragon Quest (4+) casinos.)

If I can max the char in all skills, depends on how it's done. If through use, would that mean buying and selling repeatedly? If selling, no problem, should normally have lots of stuff to sell (unless the game has unusually few drops and finds). If only buying, see what I said about about being forced to buy junk to get to the better stuff. If on the other hand it's skill points but no level/experience cap and unlimited respawns, depends on how much grinding I can take. Would definitely be a low priority skill, and if I can finish the game without access to top tier purchases, I most likely will unless it'll be particularly easy to get too many skill points to know what else to do with.
Think I only saw that in a freeware game out of what I played, Blades of Heaven. There are a couple of rare drops required, and in one case you need to capture a creature with an extraordinarily low encounter rate. Had to wander back and forth through the area where it should exist what seemed like forever, was checking a guide to make sure it really does exist...

What if only buying, but you are expected to frequently buy lots of consumables for routine use (and higher skill makes better consumables available for purchase)? (Similar situation if the game gives everything limited durability in a way that actually matters, like in Fire Emblem and some SaGa games, and let's suppose that there's no way to repair items that doesn't involve this skill.)


What if either:
* The skill is cheaper in terms of skill points than the more obviously combat-related skills?
* It is much cheaper to raise the level of a low level skill than a high level skill? (For example, maybe raising a skill from (n - 1) to n takes n skill points, or even 2 ^ n skill points?)
* The game doesn't have any combat-related skills that can be increased using the pool of skill points available for this skill?
What if, later in the game, you could max this skill more cheaply than it would take to put one more point into your main combat skill?

Morrowind is my favorite game of all time, so no I didn't confuse it with Gothic. I mentioned Piranha Bytes games are similar. If you played Morrowind without ever paying for training, hats off to you I guess.

I wouldn't. End of. Very frugal, will not use consumables except in quite extreme situations, or maybe a spree towards the end (or before a point of no return) to get some things I had to put off until then. Been known to list it as a plus when a game doesn't even have them. So if the game is impossible without regular use and there's no easier setting to get around it, I'd bang my head against it for a certain stretch of time, depending on how much I like the atmosphere and story, but eventually get too frustrated and give up if it can't be done.
Awfully annoying!
I'll just say I recall getting Christof's DEX to 100 in Vampire: Redemption. Or that now I'm into the 4 SP / point range (max, since they're tagged skills, so half cost, would be 8 / 1 otherwise) for my 2 skills of choice on Lionheart and I still put everything in them, and even the benefits per point in the skill drop as you go high. Hardly efficient, and goes against me wanting to have a char good at everything, would have been way better to stop before getting into 4 / 1 at least and spread the rest among other useful skills that'd go at 1/1, but... commitment? I don't even know, but tend to do it that way.
And, again, expect to get very little use out of purchases if it's a game that works in a way I'm ok with, mainly some gear that fits better with what else I have, or that gives me a fighting chance in an area where I'd preferably expect to find something better as a drop, maybe some crafting stuff I can't otherwise find (enough of) if crafting is a thing and the really good gear is available that way. Or, as I said before, finding the best things available at some better merchants that become available relatively early, knowing exactly what I'm saving up for and how that will affect my chars, be as miserly as I possibly can until I can afford those things directly, making do with whatever I can find until then, then just deck char(s) in said best available gear probably around midgame if not even earlier, and keep it until I'll find those top class late game treasures (at least I'd expect the top class gear to be found somewhere as treasure, not in stores).
You don't need to, but you can. Really nice system in that way, you can train through use or pay a trainer. May be handy to pay a trainer early on, to get a skill to an usable level before training through use, or quite the contrary, late on if you can manage to train high enough, if the skill becomes too effective for training through use, needing way too few uses of it to do anything.

Thing is, I used to be like that, but over the years I've learned to use consumables when they're useful enough and readily available; using the Chemist job in Final Fantasy 5 definitely helped here. (For those not aware, if you earn enough ABP in this job, you get the ability to mix items to produce a variety of powerful effects, including a full revive (well before you get the spell that does that) and an HP drain attack that has the same power as the Bahamut summon (but is available much earlier.) That game also has a few other tricks, like breaking rods to kill early bosses in a single round, and having a Ninja throw scrolls to get moderately strong all-enemy magic attacks before you get other ways.

On the other hand, I often like to find ways to make the party self-sufficient, so that the party can fight indefinitely without the need for any resource that can't be recovered with the strategy. This can, for example, include using infinite-use items for healing. (In fact, in Lennus 2, whicn I'm playing right now, in the later game I prefer to use the combination of a Sexy Dress (kills caster, restores 75% of everyone else's HP) and the Revive spell (costs 80 HP (which is very little, and yet it's the most expensive spell), and when maxed out will revive a character at full HP. Interestingly enough, Phantasy Star 3 has a pair of items (Royal Vest and Force Vest) that lets you do the same thing, except that the Force Vest can fail (but nothing prevents you from trying again, especially outside of combat).)

Interestingly enough, SaGa 2 has weapon durability without a way to fully repair, but you can dodge the issue by using only robots and monsters. Robots use conventional weapons, but their durability is halved when (un)equipped; however, it will return to that amount when you go to the inn. Monster attacks (things like Claw and Bite, but also some that mimic spells) have limited uses, but they also recover at the inn. A party containing only these two races leads to a gameplay experience that is very different from a typical RPG, where stats are not gained through leveling or usage, but rather through other methods.

So, in a game like Morrowind or Oblivion, would you completely avoid the use of (non-bound) weapons and armor, and just rely on spells and martial arts, which don't decay, so you don't have to worry about durability?

(In Morrowind, you can avoid the issue of having to recharge your Magicka by enchanting items with the effects you need, including bound weapons and attack spells.)

(Also, I assume you would ignore Alchemy for this reason?)

You mean, "needing way too *many* uses", right?

This is actually one issue I have with the Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion growth system; when a skill is high, it's harder to incease, but performing harder tasks doesn't let you increase the skill faster. This is one thing that Final Fantasy 2 and Wasteland both did bette; it's easier to raise your skills to higher levels if you have harder challenges, which is not the case in Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion.

Actually, there is one more interesting observation about Lennus 2. While that one city you reach mid-game has the best equipment that can be found in an ordinary shop, the game's ultimate sword can only be found in two ways:
* As a rare drop from an enemy that only appears when enough of a certain enemy type combines. (This is actually how you got that weapon in Paladin's Quest, though I believe it wasn't as rare there, and it's actually not that useful in the long run.)
* In the final dungeon, there is a robot who sells items, though not through the shop interface. The last item it sells is that ultimate weapon; you have to buy the robot's other items first, and these items are expensive enough that all the money you earned in the late game (due to lack of anything new to spend it on) might not be enough.


By the way, I thought of another interesting thing Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song does with how it handles weapon durability, which I may go into later.

The thing with Morrowind is that, with everything always respawning right away, doesn't feel like I'm actually consuming. I'll just leave and get back again and it'll be there again. Also, with maxed repair, it's not much of an issue to repair. Remains annoying nevertheless. And can rest when needed, and magicka of items replenishes so can do stuff that way.
As for alchemy, used it to train it to max, making stuff and selling typically. For practical use, not really.
No, said way too few uses, just for the reason you said, hard to increase it when it's already at high levels.

But this reminded me that Lords of Xulima did make me always check stores and buy stuff and keep putting points in mercantilism and valuation. For one, you need food (annoying) and it's awfully unwise to fight without blessings, and those go up in price according to level, so it's already a matter of money management to earn enough to be able to replenish and go out again, but then there's a fixed amount of exp but the exp gain can be boosted massively (see the +65% my mage's getting in screenshot... despite hardly putting points in anything, saving for the better stuff that becomes accessible later), in part through gear. Any piece of gear can have philosopher (+3%) or prophet (+5%) attribute, it's a matter of finding them, and stores change inventory at set intervals, so run around when they do and check what's new, see if any new +exp stuff showed up, and if so see how you can fit it with what you have. At that point (last I played was a year ago) I had 2 chars who didn't even have weapons, since they were using 2h and I found +exp shields for them, so made do without. Cleric basically constantly casts anyway, so didn't need one, paladin was main fighter too but at that point could make do.

In SaGa 1 and 2, most of your equipment (especially in SaGa 1) is bought, and stores do not have limited inventory; you can just keep buying items until your inventory fills up, equip some of them (or use them if they're consumables, and this includes the permanent stat boost items in SaGa 1 I mentioned), and then buy more. The DS remake of SaGa 2 adds an arena that lets you battle for more prizes as much as you want, and you don't even need to worry about the cost of doing so as your items and threads used return after the battle. In fact, in SaGa 2 DS, the only items that are in limited supply are quest items, permanent stat boosts (unlike in SaGa 1), and two special items, one of which isn't a weapon (so no durability concerns) and the other of which is unique in having infinite durability.

By the way, SaGa 1 has another quirk; while early game encounters don't give much money, late game encounters give absurd amounts, to the point where you can, in a single battle, get enough money to raise a human's STR or AGI from 20 to 100; at this point, it takes longer to buy and drink all the stat boosting potions than it does to get the money needed for them!

I ended up quitting Lords of Xulima because level ups were too stressful.

Half of it is simple at least. You always pick speed and, once it becomes available, learning. The other attribute point varies by class, and other 2 skill points by class and level. My mage just stores them basically, just got a level in flames. Cleric is hard, should store for the much better stuff that appears later, but there's necessary stuff before then as well. Others got a few more things early, before learning, since then... Explorer is easy, herbs and terrains. Paladin also easy, Aura of Protection. Bard maxed Song of Courage early, then it's mercantilism and alternating between identification and evaluation. Thief, perception and alternate between locks and traps. The extra points coming now and then are darn useful for most classes. And will be even more so late on, when some skills may take a full level's worth or even more per point. But those skills started early will also get maxed eventually, freeing up points.
But this sure is off topic here.