However, that's just a minor complaint that doesn't actually have much bearing on the game since, as I said, the skill itself is otherwise well done. Speech on the other hand...well, there's a skill that just took it up the ***. Similar to Lockpicking, my Speech goes up automatically regardless of character build because I sell my loot. You know, cause it's an RPG, and that's sort of a big part of RPG's, is finding loot, selling it, and using the proceeds to get new gear/a house/a horse/whatever floats your boat. Now, if you're actually trying to use Speech as a skill, well, good luck. Apart from just selling a buttload of stuff, your only option is passing speech checks, and those can be few and far between, unless you know where to look for them. Since half of what you do to raise speech is the same as what you do with any character and the other half is simply lacking, I can't help but feel like the skill is a little invalidated.
To be fair, these are really just quibbles, but hey, general discussion forum, I think this is the appropriate place. I just think things are a little bit screwey when a mage-based character has Speech and Lockpick skill that pace the actual magic skills for a good portion of the game.