It's a fine mechanic for some games, but I don't think Underrail is the game for things like that. Respeccing really undermines the value of your choices and character development and even reduces replayability, imo. It would take a lot away from the game.
Huh? I really don't get it what would the game lose if you had option of you fixing simple mistake like missing single point of strength which prevents my level 20 character from wearing Tungsten armor... if under replayability you mean I need to play game from scratch with fresh character just so I can have strength 9 then no thanks, I rather play something else.
As epeli pointed out (incredible, we agree on something ). the point here is that you are developing your character to be something. Respecing would make this useless. You would just be the great god of underrail who at a moment's notice could become the best crafter who could craft anything and everything in the game and right after that become this really badass gunsliger who tossed grenades but on the next moment he was the most bad ass psion and a ninja who'd go invisble in someone's face and blow up their minds.
I still don't get it why this bothers you so much, nobody forces you to do it since it is each player individual choice... if someone wants to test several difference characters builds without wasting endless hours or going through same quests over and over again from scratch or just fix simple build choice like missing single point of strength or dexterity or realizing he doesn't need crafting but wants better lockpiking or some different feat. This game has so many choices it is easy to pick wrong one or get skill you end up never using so instead of forcing some inexperienced RPG player to play from scratch he should be able to easily fix his mistake and enjoy the game.
If you are so much annoyed by this we already have option of exporting and importing character which I consider to be fantastic option since you don't have to play each build with fresh character just to check all the great stuff which has been added and this can easily be exploited to kill everyone over and over and over and over and over... just for experience and loot.
This obviously makes no sense whatsoever. You are developing your character so you have to chose what you are at the beggining and go from there. You can specialise or be ok at lot of stufff but not good at anything. These are consequential decisions that will greatly influence your gameplay and how you approuch and deal with the situations thrown at you.
On the other hand on an MMO it's exactly the opposite. There is no real interest in getting you that involved when later on you discover that is not the optimal build for you end content. This is because MMOs will want you playing and if they say, start a new character and grind through 50 ormore levels to get an optimal build (which can be screwed at any time due to nerfs and buffs with every single patch), then you will stop playing and if you stop playing you stop giving them money and they want your money! On the other hand single player games are not being constantly messed with... Not after the final release, at best they get some bug patches but rarely balance changes.
And this is relevant how?
Many single player RPG offer this feature also and could be useful to get casual players to buy the game (especially if iPad version gets released one day), besides helping players which made some small error in building their character.
If it annoys you so much we can have retainer hidden in some deep cave behind rocks with limited options like increase strength +1 in exchange for dexterity -1 and get skill +10 and lose -10 to other, same for feats and he would charge some very rare difficult to find item.