My respec in Avowed turned the combat from Skyrim into Dishonored, and now I'm having a blast as an invisible parkour sword-mage

My first 15 hours in the Living Lands were a bit of a blundering affair. The game's progression doesn't pigeonhole you into any particular class path, and each time you level up you can pick abilities from Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard pools. Within each path, certain abilities and upgrades of existing ones require you to reach a particular level, but by and large if you see an ability you like the sound of across another of the paths, you can grab it freely. It's an interesting system that kind of flies in the face of typical RPG progression that rewards some degree of class-based specialisation.

Not used to this freeform levelling system, and leaning on my 'Safe-Experimental' build that I'd often go for in Elder Scrolls games, I opted for something of a Spellsword—a more or less even split between melee and magic abilities. Avowed lets you insta-swap between two different weapon sets with a single key press, so I figured wand and spellbook on one set, and sword-and-shield on the other should do the trick.

But for reasons I still don't understand, the upgrade that was supposed to make my wand Power Attacks explode on impact didn't seem to work (nor did its Tier 2 upgrade), and the shield bash that was supposed to disrupt enemy spells and attacks felt puny and inconsistent. As a mage I felt like a First Year at Hogwarts summoning useless sparkles from my wand, and as a fighter I felt like a featherweight trying hopelessly to outmuscle heavyweight enemies. Things just weren't clicking, and in a game where combat is a major focus, that meant that my early hours were mired by frustration.

All along, Avowed gives you the option to respec, but I've always had a weird psychological block around that, maybe because doing so meant conceding that my first-choice way to play wasn't viable. It took me deep until the final chapter of Baldur's Gate 3 to accept that a straight Warlock build just didn't work as well in the game as it does in tabletop D&D, and in the past I'd embrace the challenge of working with the hand I'd dealt myself in the hope that the in-game reality would eventually come close to the fantasy I'd had in my head about a particular build. In Baldur's Gate 3, I waited a little too long to shift to the infinitely more fun Sorlock (Sorceror-Warlock), but man am I glad I didn't wait (well, more than 15 hours) before respeccing in Avowed. In fact, without it, I'm not sure I'd have pushed on with the game.

Soon after entering the second of the game's four overworld regions, I committed to the respec, which you can do at a cheap and cheerful price. Out went all my Fighter abilities, and in came a couple of Ranger ones that not only elevated my own experience, but felt like how the game actually wants to be played. Avowed has pretty robust underlying movement mechanics, and unlocking these abilities gave me a level of lethality and mobility that whisked me back to my glory days of leaping around the streets of Dunwall in Dishonored.

First up, there's Power Slide. From the off, you can ground-slide in Avowed by sprinting then hitting the crouch key, but it doesn't serve that much purpose until you unlock this ability, which knocks down enemies that you slide into (and stuns them when upgraded). Perhaps most important, however, is Shadowing Beyond, which lets you turn invisible mid-combat, completely reposition yourself, and deliver a magic-infused backstab for massive damage.

Suddenly, despite being a lightly armoured dweeb with a spellbook in one hand and sword in the other, I was a killing machine, charging headlong at xaurips and sliding underneath their thrown spears to knock out their feet from under them. High-level encounters (marked with three skulls to indicate 'Don't mess with us') that I'd previously have avoided became challenging but beatable skirmishes, in large part thanks to my ability to disappear from sight, then reappear with my flaming sword sticking out of the chest of the baddest baddie on the battlefield (sometimes yanking it out to make them one-shot dissipate into a rainbow of Essence confetti). When things get a bit hairy in battle, I go invisible, scramble up to a ledge (again, the game's parkour-climby mechanics encourage this), then rain ice and fire from on high, with the elevated view allowing me to aim my AoE attacks at the ground much more precisely than when I'm down in the thick of things.

Where before I was struggling to find breathing room as I tried shifting between melee combat and ranged magic, now I'm weaponising and maximising the game's movement mechanics, lifting the flow of battle from fairly rote ARPG combat to high-level first-person action. Avowed is a game with a robust movement system, so it's a little strange that you can find yourself playing through it without engaging in the abilities that really take advantage of it, but I'm still grateful that it makes respeccing so simple that you can course-correct with ease.

There are still a couple of movement-exploiting attacks I'd love to add to my mobile mage-assassin arsenal, such as the Power Jump that lets you leap down off a ledge into the fray with an enemy-toppling ground pound, but it's clear I'm now on a path that both works for me and complements the game's core mechanics. I now look forward to encounters instead of finding them a hindrance to exploring the lovely world and powering through the solid story.

Yes, maybe it's indicative of iffy game design that a couple of small changes to a build could so drastically change your experience from a tedious to a delightful one (looking at you, Elden Ring). There's a discussion to be had there, but not on my game time, and maybe there's something to be said for an RPG that gives you so much build freedom that you can make a truly crap build like I initially did. Avowed, and Baldur's Gate 3 before it, have gotten me to finally snap out of trying to accommodate a flawed build when it's clearly not working, and stubbornly sticking to a build on the principle that 'if the game allows this, then it should work.' In hindsight, if I'd known I could change my envoy from Neville Longbottom to Corvo Attano in a few clicks, I'd have done it sooner.