On these forums I see UMD trumpeted as the best of everything, that skill which can make one a better healer than a healer, which can give one the powers of a wizard, etc.

I've never found UMD to be useful, in my experience. Why? Because I usually play at lower levels (say, 1-7). If you assume that a character only uses his ranks in UMD and his associated ability (Cha), with no other buffs (except, once you reach the number of ranks, synergy) to UMD (and in all games I've played thus far, including ones I have run, this is the standard assumption - a masterwork tool would be silly, and any other boosts (except directly from spells, which almost defeats the purpose) are considered cheesy), using UMD at low levels is extremely risky. For one, you have a chance of failure. In a time crunch, that in and of itself is bad. For another, if you fail by too much, bad things happen to you.

At higher levels, where the failure chance becomes slim to none, UMD usefulness skyrockets. But at lower levels, I fail to see why one would consider it great.


Explanation?