Maxing stats while leveling vs learning skills

[tanth]

I know in the past people considered maxing strength, con, int and wis before anything else (such as learning skills or spells) very important because it made your character have higher hp/mana/move in the end.  I believe you've commented on this not too long ago, saying that you prefer to learn skills often.

Is this still the case? 

How much different will final hp/mana/movement be for a character that spends a vast majority of their practices on stats, vs a character that learns skills every level?

[Cria]

The hp/mana/mv for a character that trains stats first will be exactly the same for a character that trained skills/spells first and then the stats later.  Training stats first was more important with older obsolete ltypes.  Taken from the help page for 'leveling':

    (advanced players) Your hp/mana/movement are a stateless function of your
     stats and levels.  The order in which you level or train does not affect
     the final result.

I'd suggest a mix of stats and spells/skills, while trying to use your practices on stats and skills/spells that will benefit your character the most.

-Cria

[Dentin]

My advice on practices/stats/skills is roughly as follows:

- keep somewhere between 10 and 20 spare practices around, just in case you need to get spells, skills, or train a stat.

- figure out what spells and skills you're going to take, and train your stats based on that.

I rarely max out stats early on, unless I know I'm going to do something hyper focused (like a hardcore thief or MNC caster.)

Keep in mind that it costs 900+ practices to max all your stats, and another 800-900 to train all the spells and skills.  You aren't going to be able to get everything, and dumping too much into stats is just going to make your character skill anemic.

As Cria said, it was more important for old style characters than it is now.  You can train your stats at any time without suffering penalties.

[Woem]

In addition to, as Dentin said, making sure you train stats to go along with what skills/spells you plan on using it is worthwhile to train constitution and charisma early as well.  More constitution will mean more hitpoints, and higher charisma will mean getting attack less (and or not first if you're in a group) and both of these skills will let you stay alive longer.  Staying alive longer is always good.

[Fehlan]

I always found doing the majority of statmaxxing early to be better. The returns are faster in the end.
Practices come faster early on, and the heavy investment into stats is more easily taken. In the upper levels,
when practices are coming singly for the most part, the quicker return comes from an immediate boost to, or
learning of, a new skill or spell. The overall cost is the same in the end, but the effects are appreciated sooner
this way, and a large portion of skills and spells are unneccesary early on, however fun and novel they may be.