Mara, I managed to build a character that has just what you wanted: religion, diplomacy, scholarship and a bit burglary on the side. From what I can see, diplomatic choices don’t really increase Honesty that much, but religious ones do kick tradition to high places. I think it’s impossible to have an innovative priest or anything like that. Though, there’s a catch to this: you can only make a character like this if you bought the Amiria pack with the Condors of Patabesh included.
Here are the steps:
- Have Para be from the Desert Empire
- Have Pon be the diplomat and scholar combo
- Pick the jewel sacred to Amiria
- Pick Might as your weakest stat (“Cold set into my bones, threatening to kill me”)
- Choose mountain hermits when speaking with Gronput.
- Listen to Gronput and use the old paths he doesn’t know.
By now, you should have a character with 1 diplomacy, 1 scholarship, 1 priest and 4 Resolve, 3 Bearing, 3 Wisdom, 2 Grace and 1 Might. That’s the good bit: Resolve helps you pass tests as a priest and a diplomat, so it’s very useful. Wisdom and Grace are also pretty good, and the type of stuff a sketchy diplomat would have. Now, in Chapter 2, you do it like this:
- “My father suffered in Mytele because he was ignorant of its politics”, which gives you one more point to diplomacy
- “I spoke to Dace’s quartermaster…”, which increases scholarship to two.
- Practice with your father’s lockpicks, which gives you one in burglary.
- Then, in Chapter 3, pick Amiria as your goddess and choose her second option, that kicks burglary up to two.
So, now you have it: two diplomacy, two scholarship, two burgary and one priestess. Plus, by chapter 5, you can increase your religious skills by talking with Barec., giving you 2s across the board. From what I see, there are plenty of options in the early chapter that increase Trickery, so I think you still have enough to keep your character more roguish than honest, even if Honesty is tied to diplomacy.
You could say that all this is metagaming to make the best character, but, in my defense: I see the first three chapters of the game as a chance to build the MC you want. They’re like a big tutorial, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with picking the pieces of what you want and them roleplaying this MC throughout the game.
I hope this little guide helps.
. Personally, I thought that the game is pretty open to just experiment and make your own character if you want to. I had a mish-mash of scholar, mariner, archer and diplomat that went along pretty well.